


The Metaphysicist

by CryingKilljoy



Category: Kill Your Darlings (2013)
Genre: 1940s, BoyxBoy, Daniel Radcliffe - Freeform, F/M, John Krokidas - Freeform, M/M, dane dehaan - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-01
Updated: 2016-06-15
Packaged: 2018-06-05 19:04:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 46
Words: 80,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6717382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CryingKilljoy/pseuds/CryingKilljoy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All Allen Ginsberg needs is a library book on rhyme and meter, things he absolutely abhors being so everpresent yet things he requires for an article on his blog. What he finds is rather a young librarian and writer by the name of Lucien Carr, choking on cigarettes and booze and the glamorous life of deterioration -- and just like his writing, it's quite magnificent.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part One

** **

**Part One**

_Rhyme and meter, never sweeter._

Chapters: 1 - 8

Selected song: "Library Pictures" by Arctic Monkeys


	2. tumblr n00b

Imagine a writer, not so different from yourself, living eternally in the basement of their best friend’s house. Yes, this may seem like a tale of pity and a lack of success, because that writer is twenty-three years old and doesn’t have a job besides gathering the various papers strewn about the driveway and occasionally on the front stoop, but there’s something beautiful in that writer’s head that _should_ be kept in the basement of a married couple’s home, and that writer is hoping to explore it.

That spark has been blooming for a while now, ever since the writer discovered the ancient typewriter in the dusty confines of their parents’ attic back somewhere in Paterson, a place on which he chooses not to reflect, and eventually their fingers snapped at him to type something worthwhile onto its rusting keys, and at last there was the first draft of a one page thriller partially plagiarized from the plethora of used history textbooks littered across the chilled stone of the basement floor.

That’s where it started, so long ago in his creative childhood, but that is certainly not where it ends. The writer has endured three novels and now weekly updates on his blog, _The Metaphysicist_ , which receives a frequent splurge of comments before settling back down for a few moments to collect the readers’ praise for something with which the writer has replaced fiction writing entirely, and that’s his life now. It’s not a glamorous life, per se, but it’s the only one he was endowed, and lord knows humans always mess theirs up. He’s doing well behind all of the layers of caffeine to hide the violets sprouting from underneath his eyes, behind the fountain of hair spraying from his head, behind the reassuring clicks and swipes of his computer mouse to produce an article the public will devour in the span of a few minutes and then share with their equally as astute companions, and the writer is fueled by that. That’s why he continues to write, because after forcing himself to chug through a chapter every day in the novel writing phase, stringing words onto a page isn’t so magnificent anymore unless there’s feedback to clarify that his hard work is deeply appreciated to the mind of an intellectual.

So, in a way, basking in the glow from the computer screen late into the night is the sole life of a writer such as this one, in addition to avoiding the pleas of Edie Parker to get his ass up here because she’s been cooking all day for him and Jack, and the writer won’t relinquish it for anything, for it’s all that they are accustomed to.

To be upfront with you, this writer is me, and beyond all of the hardships of hating every word I spew out onto the digital canvas of my laptop, being that writer is quite the treat when I’m not sobbing in the dark because I killed yet another character whose demise flew to me while I was choking on chamomile tea, and Jack Kerouac and Edie Parker are simply fine with that, so I don’t push them and ask if they _really_ are fine, as I’ve been hoarding every last drop of milk from their refrigerator in my stomach without so much as a word to them about it, and I’m pretty sure I’ve broken their washing machine once or twice since I’ve been residing here as well. Long story short, these boundaries exist for a veritable reason, and I prefer just to wallow in the dimly-lit basement of their New Jersey cottage so that I can never cross them.

And usually that entails never leaving the house unless Edie scolds me for being a worthless ingrate who only benefits from her one sidedly, but today is a different occurrence where I am required to haul myself out of bed and trudge to the library for another article to appease the public and make them think I’m a pretentious scholar who understands more things than I actually do, but the bed feels nice and cozy and precisely like sinking into a blissful ignorance that I should despise but never want to escape from, and it is only with the reminder that Edie isn’t awake during this time of morning to reprimand me that I tumble from the mattress with a belt already restrained within my fingers for utilization and for the stability I manufacture whenever I flee the house to research the topics of my articles.

I’m basically a corpse after everything I’ve written and after the hours of dreamless sleep I’ve abandoned, but writers are never really alive at all anyway. We wear a meat suit, a veneer of intelligence and composure, when we are, in fact, crumbling on the inside, when we are blocking our lids against the dirt of our graves, when we are nothing more than a transmitter of the agony associated with decay, and that is why I’m moving with the energy of a snail towards my dresser to throw the traditional sweater and the traditional pair of cargo shorts over my degenerative body, because quite frankly I don’t give a shit about my appearance anymore and whether or not my clothes match.

Though that aforementioned degenerative body is an irreversible wreck, my mind is not, even if some people would argue the opposite. My mind is already aware that there will be a suggestion for an article in my inbox, so on instinct I reach for my phone to scroll through the heaps of words my readers never think are better than mine, but I wonder what would happen if they were cognizant of the mess I am. I live in a dark and dreary basement in some unknown town called Paterson, New Jersey, for Pete’s sake. I’m nothing special, yet as I open the first comment, it feels like I am.

Maybe it’s not so much feeling special to the reader, rather to the universe, because lo and behold: the universe has selected me to write about the shitstorm that is rhyme and meter, as if I haven’t suffered through enough of that on the wild campus of Columbia University, and I suppose it’s unfair to jump to conclusions before delving into its facts during my trip to the library, but the reader asked for my brutally honest opinion, so it’s my brutally honest opinion that I’ll provide them with.

At first, I had no problem with rhyme and meter. I couldn’t really care less about them, so I supplemented my poems with them from time to time, but it was when they became the fundamental property of elegant writing that I refrained from indulging in their effects as much. Nothing is entitled to as much space as rhyme and meter is in every educational institution and every writing blog. I enjoy consuming the space I deserve, but even I, the socially inept hermit crab, can draw the line, yet those two principles cannot, and they’ve been drilled into my brain and the brains of other young writers to the point where they find it acceptable to message me about writing an article on them.

If I weren’t so intractable, I’d drop the subject, delete the comment, pretend like I didn’t see it from its spot under the masses of other comments I acquire each day, and then I’d move on with my dismal existence, but that is not the case for this matter. I have a lot to say about the demons that are rhyme and meter, and it is my faith that a few people will be enlightened due to my documented opinion from the Internet of all places, where the old people never supply credit, and hopefully I can awaken a few more writers to the fact that writing is about free expression, about saying what you need to say because you need to say it, not because you’re being forced into saying it with the breath of your guardians digging its claws into your feeble neck pricked by the chill of being observed for your opinion. They are being obstructed now, by these laws portrayed by college professors as superior to amorphous beauty when they can instead be equal or can be weighed by a homo sapien’s perception. No human needs bullshit paradigms like rhyme and meter in their lives to compress them. Speak freely, and soon you will realize that you are living more extraordinarily than even a connoisseur, with the aggregate of life your bittersweet wine.

For the current moment, I’m trapped within the walls of a world who believes that rhyme and meter are the essentials to splendid writing, so it is my tacit job to dispel that theory, ‘cause it’s not like I have any other job.

So shoving secrecy into the soles of my battered shoes whom I never wear, I saunter towards the front door to Edie and Jack’s house and slip outside to stroll across the sidewalk with the clear destination of the library suspended and unaffected even in my racing mind.

Rhyme and meter will meet their downfall if it’s the last thing I do. Yes, some of my readers are going to hate me for this, but I don’t really give a shit. It needs to be said, and writing is all about saying those risky things.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: allen is more famous than me on tumblr I'm prepared to fight
> 
> yeah so this story is gonna be hella lit and hella pretentious (why do I sound like hillary clinton or should I say HELLAry clinton amirite haha yeah I'm so #relatable lol stay woke m8 whatevs)
> 
> I'm Dakota (he/they) hello there......,,,,get ready for pain
> 
> I'm going to do a "today's branch of philosophy is" thing at the end of each chapter because this story is SO intellectual of course why would it be n o t ;why would I ever be s t u p i d what??? WHAT
> 
> metaphysics: dealing with the first principles of things, such as being, knowing, existing, etc. (this happens to be my favourite)
> 
> ~Dakota


	3. online poetry be like

“Excuse me?” I ask in the politiest voice I can expel for someone who barely leaves the house and never requires a voice quite like this one. My hands skin the ledge of the cherry polished table to occupy myself while the inattentive boy behind the counter is helplessly immersed in a book about homosexuality in Greek mythology, and from what I can decipher, he won’t be deserting that compelling activity anytime soon.

If only I possessed the tenacity to read something as controversial as that, because if I were to do that, then lord knows some fading bigot would approach me and say I’m going to hell for simply imbibing someone else’s words that were printed exclusively for those who elect to read it, not for old men who think gay sex is somehow different from the new anal trend of heterosexuals. However, I’m far from that tenacity, so I can only observe in awe as this man gives no shits about crusty grandpas who will oppose him in a place where he’s allowed to read whatever the hell he desires, and if that’s homosexuality in ancient Greece, then I’m not here to stop him.

He looks so peaceful in the captivity of his book, even if it’s about such a thrilling topic and even if he’s ignoring me while reveling in this state, no matter how alluring it is, and I find myself staring at him, at the berry of his slickened lips, at his irises the hue of water dotted with sea creatures and salt and the power to disrupt the mightiest of vessels upon its daring waves, at his hair as blonde as a goddess from the book poised in such a way that it showcases his tumbling river of golden locks, and I swear I’ve witnessed candid pulchritude in its home of fresh parchment and cracked spines from the torment this elegance must endure, this evident writer must endure.

Disastrously, every writer was born from piercing screams and aching hours, all because we were loved unconditionally. Now we want to die, now the world hates us, and now we weep in sorrow because not even that love has been preserved. We are alone, and ordinary people crave extraordinary despair, so we figure that we can profit off of our own misery like a metaphysical parasite, and that’s why I’m at the library with someone who won’t even acknowledge me.

“Excuse me, sir? I was wondering if you could help me find a book.”

How could I be so foolish? I’ve only been out in public for a few minutes, and I’ve already screwed things up. Of course I’m looking for a book! This is a goddamn library! What else would I be looking for? A loving, healthy relationship? Not likely, chiefly with the diminutive state of my social life.

I wish I could charr my mouth after that stupid comment, but alas, the closest I’ve come to doing that is accidentally sipping my coffee before waiting a few minutes for it to send away its steam puffing from its raging lungs with the sole intention of killing me before I kill myself. The boy doesn’t mind a bit, as he’s so tied up with his homoerotic mythology book that he can’t bear to acknowledge me.

As if cued by my acerbic thoughts, this is when the employee glances up from his novel, of all unfortunate timings, his vision unfolding towards me like a seductress wading in a lucrative share of playing cards with which to hammer me into their venomous clutch. “Tell me your name first.” He speaks slowly and surely, confident in his abilities and in the notion that he’ll be able to ensnare me with the piercing cry of a whip against my ears.

I have no idea why he needs to know my name, but intimacy is a dream for an isolated writer to develop a sense of what the world is actually like, beyond the ruddy fixtures of a New Jersey basement undisturbed by those who indirectly maintain it, and the worker has already intrigued me, so there’s no use in letting go of him, or else I’ll be pondering his beauty for at least a week afterwards.

Even though this boy emanates a contagious morale, I don’t seem to be infected by it, as I’m still meshed in the awkwardness of my lonely character. “Um...I’m Allen Ginsberg.”

“Allen Ginsberg,” the boy repeats, savoring my name on his tongue, every syllable and every sound wave flicked from behind his teeth as white as a pearl in the ocean of his eyes, and the mere existence of this sentence wrenches a dry swallow down my throat. “What book can I help you find, Allen Ginsberg?”

“I’m looking for one about rhyme and meter.”

Upon the release of my words, the worker’s face immediately sags with an _are you kidding me_ expression lathered all over his crystal facade, and I can decrypt already that I’m beginning to like him. “Oh, _that_ old dictator.”

I note a diluvial smile buttering my complexion, surged by the fresh discovery of a team mate. “So you hate it, too?”

Slanting close to me with his hands pounding the desk as if to vocalize a secret, the boy rolls his eyes. “It’s a dreadful old thing.”

“You’re a writer, then?”

The employee scoots out from behind his desk to recline on the front side of the accounting desk in order to gain a more serious approach, and his previously jocular tone is supplanted by a frightening diplomacy. “Allen Ginsberg, what you must understand about me is that I am not a writer, nowhere near it. I am an imposter of youth. I steal the buds off of trees to plant fresher seeds in their place and act like I didn’t just rob a fledgling of its opportunities, because the public loves it. The public wishes they could’ve done the same.”

I smirk. “Ugh, you’re obviously a writer.”

He stares at me for a moment, ocean eyes electrifying my bones as the scar of a grin tucks itself into the corner of his lips, and he eventually shifts away from the desk. “Let’s find your book, shall we?”

I follow him through the aisles with a stunning obedience, but I can’t really be bothered to mend it when I’m embarking on a journey with one of the most brilliant people I’ve encountered in my entire life, and he becomes even more brilliant when you realize that I’ve only spoken to him for a few minutes and have amassed a conclusion about his character only from those increasing seconds.

“I’m Lucien Carr, in case you were wondering,” the man informs me, his undivided attention squandered on searching for my book to aid me in writing an article I’ll really abhor writing but must write nevertheless.

Finally, I have obtained the name of this enthralling mystery, but I’m not certain how it will sway on my tongue just yet. I’ll probably recite it in the depths of my basement, in secret and in the perfect mood to reminisce on this charming man as I crease my fingers with the inconsolable urge to write about his beauty, because here in this library where strangers are heaped onto each other with the same goal as if they’re robots, uttering something as magnificent as this worker’s name is inappropriate and rotten.

Even so, the pull is too tempting, and I’m fucking weak. I’m so fucking weak, and I must speak his name. “Lucien Carr, mystical librarian,” I joke, swiping my hands across the air like I’m smoothing out a banner with those exact words stenciled on it.

“I’m a writer, not a fucking librarian,” he scoffs. “I’m only here to check out the boys while the boys check out the books I’m going to write one day.”

Thrusting my finger into the air in the triumph of winning over him, I exclaim, “Ah, so you admit you’re a writer!”

He sneers, swiveling around to entice me with those fucking ocean eyes of his. “And gay as hell.” His ocular union with me persists for what appears to be a millennium, until I’m practically choking on his easily played cajolery, and he’s fucking enjoying it, too. He’s fueled by it.

Remaining to be laced in our connection, Lucien procures a book on rhyme and meter for my use, surprising my humble figure that he could locate it so expeditiously while he extends it to me. “Do justice with it, Allen Ginsberg.” I expect to pry the book away from him swimmingly, but he’s still clutching it with a firm latch on our eye contact.

“Thanks a lot,” I chuckle clumsily, and with graduality Lucien discharges the research from his grasp, still rooting his view on me.

His presence a roaring fire in my mind, I turn from him reluctantly and slide past the tables of researchers and readers and writers just like me with a hold on my book similar to an elated schoolchild, but Lucien’s lilting voice arrests me.

“I hope to see you around, Allen Ginsberg.” As I pivot towards him once more, I notice that his ocean eyes are opaqued by a prospect I usually save for _him_ , and I nod.

“Sounds like a plan.”

“And also update me on your article, yeah?” With that, Lucien ships a wink to me without anticipating a reply and vanishes behind the counter to read again, and the cycle is henceforth reset for the next customer. How jealous I must be already.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I love Lucien so much already I'm so
> 
> and so does allen m80 we're all dead after that
> 
> hedonism: indulging yourself by doing whatever feels good
> 
> ~Dakeratin (for lucien's beautiful hair)


	4. motivating the gays since birth

I haven’t been able to focus on my rhyme and meter article when Lucien Carr is the only thing on my mind, and when that’s the case, it’s extremely difficult to get him out of your mind, because if he’s a singular deity in your thoughts, then the thought of removing him is plainly nonexistent, so for the past day I’ve been living inside of his charm replicated through fuzzy memories.

My readers aren’t concerned from what I can tell, because only one has commented about an update that I can’t provide them with, because Lucien Carr is stuck in my fucking brain, but I don’t update every day anyway, so I still have time before the remainder of my readers are arriving at my doorstep with pitchforks and fire and signs protesting my laziness and my newly found infatuation with a librarian of all people.

I’ve tried stationing myself by the computer, fingers poised to type something my readers will enjoy, though they enjoy everything I spew out of my whirring brain, and I have been ultimately unsuccessful, as all I can do is imagine myself as a schoolgirl who writes their name blended with the name of their crush in their pink unicorn notebook, hoping that no one will see it but hoping that their crush will somehow get the hint from the opposite side of the fucking classroom.

There are certainly benefits to being a child, benefits that I have mentally enhanced since escaping from Columbia University where everything was all or nothing, and it was a high stakes environment where screw ups can send you to the bottom of the food chain, but that’s college for you, and middle school was so much better in some way, because I didn’t have to fret about producing an article every other day for people who can’t do the research themselves and rely on me to bring them knowledge in their cramped schedules, which is becoming increasingly arduous when someone won’t fucking leave you alone.

And despite Lucien being the only person on my mind for the past day, I’ve since then decided that revisiting the library is a sound idea, and I must’ve been drunk or something, even in my abstinence, because now I’m crossing the street towards the ancient building flooding with books and intellectuals and Lucien Carr, the mysterious writer hiding behind the shelves of things he already knows.

I’m not as nervous as I was yesterday, as I know now what I’m dealing with, however strange he is, so with the minimal reassurance of a full breath gliding into my lungs, I crack the door from its hinges and step into the welcoming library.

Immediately when I enter the facility, the aroma of ink to stamp books and the paired aroma of novel pages are wisps around my head to accompany every other delight of such a magical place. Now that I’ve acquired a deeper appreciation of libraries, each sight I absorb is more and more magnificent than it had previously been. The shelves scale to grand heights, the books murmur about their designated plots, and the atmosphere buzzes with the life of knowledge.

A huddle of scholars swarms a table in the middle of the room, some completely silent and some giggling to their friends at the absurdity that is none other than Lucien Carr, modeling on the table as a book is pinched between his fingers, with his sonorous speech reverberating against the walls so that every library patron may hear about his oddly fascinating topic about which he was reading when I visited here last: homosexuality in Greek mythology, except now he’s including Roman mythology as well.

“I’m not saying you have to like them,” Lucien begins, somewhat of a drunken slur to his voice, though his posture suggests that he’s absolutely sober and just deceitful, “but you have to admit that Patroclus and Achilles were pretty fucking gay, all right?”

He’s actually correct. Though Homer never specified that Achilles and Patroclus were in a romantic relationship, there’s nothing to imply that they were not. There are so many details that prove their affiliation, an affiliation that extends beyond a platonic type, and it’s just splendid that Lucien is cognizant of this, because when I try to explain it to my friends, they never are.

Confused whispers bend around the huddle, professing how this man makes no fucking sense, but Lucien only nods in approval, because he’s opened their minds to the possibilities of secret homosexuals they never knew existed, if only in fiction, and some of them are not well disposed towards that subject, so they subtlety retreat to the library tables to resume their studying.

“Did you know” — Lucien clusters in his own figure, hands pressed against the air as if on glass — “that when Patroclus died, Achilles cried so loudly that the gods at the bottom of the sea could hear him?”

The library patrons are generally unfazed by this factoid, though some of them display an interested expression, perhaps only to appease the boy screaming at them on the table, because when you think about it, that’s a powerful position prone to kicking and jumping and murder of those surrounding him, and considering his character, I’m not completely certain that he wouldn’t do any of those things.

“They asked to be buried together, you know.” Lucien smirks, tossing his head as if to pose as someone who can never be consumed by a mortal human, someone above us all, someone blatantly untouchable.

“Lucien, get down from there!” the manager orders, and with a broad sneer, Lucien complies, narrowly avoiding crushing the bodies of the library visitors as they wrestle with parting the corporeal sea of which they are a part.

He would’ve carried on with his monotonous work of sorting the books and locating numbers of patrons, already returning to it instantaneously after jumping from the desk, but then he spies my figure cowering in the doorway in awe of his bravery, and he instead revises his route so that it leads to me.

An obnoxious swagger beats the soles of his shoes as he approaches me, jaw carved into a stone lock. “Allen Ginsberg, back so soon?”

“I figured I might do some extra studying before I write the article. It’s always healthy to know more than you need to know.”

“Perhaps.” Lucien fumbles with a half-worn pack of cigarettes, pinning it in between his ivory teeth and preparing to ignite it. “Sometimes it gets you in trouble, though.”

I can already feel myself asphyxiating under both the layers of smoke and the layers of memories attributed to it, but I politely weigh out smacking the item from his mouth, as that would most likely spark an irreversible conflagration. “Speaking of getting in trouble, cigarettes are banned from the library. It’s a public space, not to mention a hazard.”

Shouldn’t he understand this? Smoking is almost never facilitated in closed quarters, because the carbon monoxide produced from flaming materials can potentially poison someone, and that would just be a shame to have a law suit and terrible bodily functions on your plate.

Lucien gestures to the door, abhorring being contradicted, because to him there’s always a way, even if he has to choose to ignore it for that way to materialize. “Then shall we go outside?”

“You know, cigarettes are bad for you, even if you’re outside.”

“Screw my health. We’re all dead anyway.” His opening words are punctuated by his lanky form slamming against the door progressing out of the library, and I suppose it’s my job to trail behind him, as he’s too captivating to abandon.

Lucien is positioned on the steps by the time I fully exit the building, his legs a right angle to support the elbow maintaining the cigarette, maintaining his premature decay, and I join the man on the concrete slabs with an invisible shield from the smoke.

I glance over at him, but his eyes never shift for my sentences, and that’s by some means all right. “So what was that whole speech thing about?”

He eventually engages with me, the cigarette bobbing in between his lips with each syllable shaped like lines on a heart monitor now pulsing in the air. “I enlist in flammable activities to receive flammable outcomes, and it is only in the morgue that I regret any of it.”

The manner in which he immobilizes his smoke within his teeth is far too elegant for something that kills millions of people, but I’m catching myself being drowned in the spell, and somehow I don’t want to stop.

“All they did was develop an unfavorable opinion towards you.”

Those patrons may not be visiting the library any longer, all because of Lucien Carr’s wild frenzy of Roman mythology with the unwanted twist that these scholars generally dodge when it’s possible, though with my new companion’s outgoing personality it’s quite strenuous to do so.

Lucien shrugs. “Let them. A human’s opinion is theirs alone, and I presume that’s why you’re writing about rhyme and meter, yes? Because you despise it?”

“Basically.”

“Typical journalist,” Lucien mutters, skewing from me once more to mutter again how journalists are too desperate for the world to handle.

My mouth steps to the side, dissatisfied with Lucien’s critical description of me. “Actually, I like to think that I’m a poet.”

“A stiff homosexual is what you are,” Lucien states flatly.

From what I’ve observed, Lucien Carr is a very perceptive man, and now I’m realizing that he may be _too_ perceptive. It’s not good form to delve into the secrets of others, the secrets that a person never broached because a secret is all that it will ever be unless they’re ready to share it, and I am aware that this detail would’ve emerged at some point in our friendship, but I had never predicted that it would emerge solely from Lucien’s intellect.

Even so, he’s the one shouting about homosexuality in Greek and Roman mythology, so it’s unlikely that he’s homophobic, saving the rare chance that he’s ranting about it as a cruel joke to an already marginalized group of society, though that seems implausible for him, primarily because he was flirting relentlessly with me yesterday with a phenomenon as mundane as the various flicks and rotations of his eyes, and he wasn’t even repelled when he noticed that it worked. Either he’s an extraordinary actor or he’s genuinely intrigued by me, but he claimed to be gay himself, and I don’t suppose a heterosexual would include that in their role. It was pretty damn believable, too.

Finished with the fun and games now that this topic has woken, I chuckle halfheartedly. “No, um, I’m not…”

“Ah, a closeted homosexual.” Lucien delivers a snippet of ash into the rough pavement of the stairs, vision not once tackling me in order to maintain his crypticness blooming with each awkward second. “Not for long.”

I almost choke on my own saliva at his ending comment, and Lucien grins to himself like always, a portion of his face hidden by an alternate angle as his cigarette hangs from his fingers in order to manufacture a resounding laugh.

Why is it that he knows so much about me? We’ve only chatted twice, and now he’s obtained one of my most personal secrets, suppressed through years of classic high school settings where any form of deviation is punished by a body in the locker or a head in the toilet and ultimately the cold shoulder from your peers. Lucien Carr must be the Sherlock Holmes of Paterson, of New Jersey, of America even! He’s got skill, and there’s no denying that, but it’s also a bit freaky to my elusive character, though he soothes it deftly with a smile and a wink to make it seem as though I willingly told him these facts.

“How did you deduct all of this already?”

Lucien leers in the faintest of fashions, then converting to solemnity. “Allen, you must be conscious that this is no different than writing. You’re sharing your soul when you share your writing, and for the longest time that was my motive to hide my words, burn them like it was the early 1940s in fascist Germany because I had new ideas that others wouldn’t like, but I’m now realizing that you, Allen, are worthy enough to know my soul, my doubts, my textures in every place that matters to friends alike, and I can only hope that you will not run away from the demons who persuade you into malevolence, rather persuade _them_ into conviviality, for I will surely do the same for you.”

A smile lurks upon my lips, unwarranted by me yet permitted to linger. “So what you’re saying is that you’d like to be friends?”

Lucien incarcerates me within his ocean eyes, waving the cigarette with the snap of a wrist, and he delivers the verdict. “Oh, absolutely.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I've written five thousand words today where is my fucking chill
> 
> also where is lucien's chill??? honestly??? seductress i'm calling the police
> 
> nihilism: rejection of morals or religions in the belief that life is meaningless
> 
> ~Dakankan


	5. feast on my gay ambitions

Each month, the generous Edie Parker holds a mandatory dinner upstairs, which means that I am to crawl out of the depths of the basement to actually socialize with people, of all monstrous activities.

Now, Edie is a lovely person. She really is, and anyone you’d ask would agree with you. She volunteers at animal hospitals, bakes cookies free of charge for school fundraisers to distribute, handles everything for her incompetent husband. The problem, however, is that _I_ am not a lovely person as she is, and I often spoil the mood when invited to the dinner table once a month.

Residing in a basement in the time after you’ve fled from college is a suitable drug for evolution into a sleep deprived beast whose greatest accomplishment is not passing out at three in the morning when you’ve abstained from rest for five days, and that transformation entails relinquishing all sociability you may have once possessed, because you frankly don’t need it in a basement, and people all around will advise you to drop the unnecessary forces in your life to live weightlessly, and I have certainly lost a lot of weight.

Part of this is because I mostly survive off of cup noodles and spite for rhyme and meter and my brain that just so happens to urge me to write when that’s the last thing I want to do, and it’s a rare occasion that I visit the realm of upstairs to feast on peas and pasta and the nutrition I need but never receive in the prison cell called the basement, where not even sunlight filters its vitamins through the blinds to nourish me, so really it’s like I’ve mutated into an inhuman figure incapable of emotion beyond the ritualistic excursions of my daily life.

And then sometimes, when I’m in the dark like always, my fingers sore from ranting digitally about what I hate in life, I remind myself that in each set of four weeks there is a dreadful event to look forward to, and that is the mandatory dinner occurring each month, where I die again and require rehabilitation merely from interacting with humans who are aware I’m feeding on them but never cross me because I’m basically a bear, and by some luck Lucien is not afraid of me.

But Lucien isn’t here right now. He’s at the library or at his own home where I don’t mean a thing to him, as he’s most likely watching a nature documentary to laugh at the dramatic American style of narration, as if a leaf is the mightiest object in the whole world just because its markings are unique, but all markings are unique for a species.

Even if he’s not here with me right now, he’s supplied me with a plethora of magical tales to spill across the table like I usually spill wine, and for that I’m thankful, as I’m both lighting a conversation and stimulating the mind that’s been raving about him for the past day.

Usually we waste the time in silence, or at least _my_ silence, while Edie attempts to spur Jack into a conversation about what happened at work today, as if anything exciting passes by that dull focus of his who only absorbs the information from online video games he’s not supposed to be playing in the workplace, and when that’s fruitless, Edie accepts that she’s finished, because I never talk to her even when my life is stocked with mystery and suffering and an interesting dinner table story. This time, on the contrary, I am ready to offer something to the conversation.

“So, Jack, how was work today?” Edie inquires, the traditional question that I can only assume is asked at every dinner, not just the mandatory monthly one, which must be quite the bore to Jack, who never has anything new to propose.

Jack fondles the peas with the tip of his fork, swirling them around with his hand crashing into his cheekbone yet never answering his wife, but after she’s been staring at him for a while, he finally relents. “Yeah, it was fine, same as always.”

“You were playing games, weren’t you?”

Sighing, Edie hopelessly investigates, “Should I even bother asking how your day went, Allen? You’re always in the basement.”

I take no offense to this comment, because I’m so entranced by my elation to care whether or not Edie recognizes the truth that I never do leave my underground quarters, and I’m dying to tell her that I actually accomplished something today. “I went to the library, contrarily.”

Edie’s eyebrow bristles higher terrains upon her forehead, surprised and a bit disbelieving. “Oh?”

Fueled by their astonishment with a tiny grin chapping my lips in hidden sarcasm, I continue, “And I met someone, too.”

Jack chokes on the rather bland peas he eventually spooned into his mouth a few seconds ago once realizing that he needed to eat, because he generally isn’t a man who can be easily shaken by abnormality, but this is too much for him. Me, a sociable person who went outside and met someone, a real someone? Now that’s unheard of, and that’s why I feel so proud of myself in this moment, as I not only broke the traditional barrier of silence at dinner, but I also broke it with something worthwhile to all of us.

“Do you know his name?” Jack grills me with his face still furnished with the green hue of peas and their mush as a result of his dumbfounded outburst.

Ugh, this man is quite the master of latency. Of course I know his name. I said I met someone. That doesn’t mean I stalked him from the parking lot as he entered the building where he goes to work every day, because I must know where he works, right? Because I’m a stalker?

“Yeah, his name is Lucien Carr, and he’s fucking brilliant.”

Edie snares a sip of wine, ushering it through her crimson stained lips without scratching any off to reveal the rosewood of her real lips, like the professional I know her to be. “What makes you think that?”

“You’d just have to meet him.”

I promise that I’m not being lazy by evading this question. I’m telling the absolute truth. I really don’t know how to describe this wonder of a man, because he’s so marvelous that he cannot be confined to arbitrary labels of his worth, so Edie and Jack will have to trust me on this one.

“I’d actually enjoy meeting him, Allen. Would you mind bringing him over sometime, and we can have drinks?”

It is at that question that my stomach kicks at its own acid ridden walls, screaming hectically to be released in order to alleviate the anxiety symptoms infesting it, screaming to reprimand this young man for being so upfront. Jack Kerouac is expecting me to bring over someone that I just met yesterday, someone who probably thinks I’m weird and clumsy and too estranged from reality to be a friend to anyone, let alone this man who understands everything there is to understand in this world and in space and in abstract concepts birthing metaphysics from its mystery, and I do not deserve to simply think about him, and I definitely don’t deserve to be enough of a friend of his to bring him around the house, notably because I live in the basement whom I call the house and the rest is just the peculiar land where Jack and Edie reside, and basements are an immediate turn off for people you’re trying to woo. But of course I’m not trying to woo him, right? That would just be absurd. Completely absurd.

So I fabricate an excuse that they cannot pick apart for the time being, in this state of gestation between Lucien and me where we don’t understand the tiniest of things about each other, where bringing him to my familiar places is inappropriate. “I barely know him.”

In the future I would obviously be a proponent of taking him here to introduce him to Jack and Edie and to show him around where I’ve been dwelling for the past year for an optimal writing atmosphere, even if it’s the dingiest location accessible to humankind, because it’s my safe place, and showing that to someone is special and only reserved for close friends, which Lucien is not. Yet.

Lucien would also be creeped out if I were to guide him to a destination familiar to a stranger but not to him. He may even think that I intend to murder him or some strange shit like that, shit that I would never contemplate but shit that can be foreseen from people you aren’t comfortable with.

Jack is persistent, however, much more persistent than I could ever be and much more persistent than I could ever deflect. “Well if your friendships lasts, will you then tell him to drop by here so that we can meet him?”

Shrugging, a scowl poisons my facade. “I guess.”

“You know, I think you should stick with him,” Edie declares, lips creased by her wine glass as she achieves the proper level of chewing her food before drinking.

“Really?” My mouth hovers as the border to the ebony void of my interior racked by shock at what Edie is suggesting. “You’re the one who always says that relationships are atrocious for asocial people like me.”

“You haven’t rejected this Lucien guy as an asocial person might, and you seem excited enough about him to desire his company more often, so why not?”

Edie’s pragmaticness never ceases to amaze me. She always has a grasp on her life and possesses enough to have a grasp on other people’s life, and she’s a hard worker, too. She’s efficient, gets things done, and is a respected person in the workplace, and when she returns home for dinner and time with Jack and minimal time with me, she’s always ready to solve our problems, whatever they may be, and she’s always ready to contradict our theories, and she’s doing it now.

I fucking hate it.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: oh look the hermit emerges from his cave
> 
> edie seems annoying now but I promise I love her you just have to wait
> 
> phenomenology: the study of human consciousness and how phenomena appear in that consciousness
> 
> ~Dakotoe


	6. wheat generation

If I am to heed Edie and Jack’s advice of bringing Lucien around the house at some point, I need to actually become familiar with him so that such a goal is attainable without it being awkward or suspicious of murder in my basement that reeks of unshaven writers and wings of dreams clipped without consent yet a basement that is home to me, which may unnerve people to whom it is not, because quite frankly it looks like a dump, and I’ve just grown accustomed to its flaws, though for others it will require a prolonged period of time to mask the dinginess with an odd appreciation for the space.

Even then, it won’t be the same, at least in intensity, because this is first and foremost my own dwelling, not the dwelling of someone else, especially if they aren’t living in it for as long as I am and maybe longer if they’re living in it with me, but wouldn’t it be nice to live somewhere with someone? Wouldn’t it be nice to escape this basement, no matter how much it has grown on me like the fungus cackling in the corners of the ceiling?

Lucien has grown on me, too, so he should be adequate for my goals, but I’m not even acquainted enough with him to simply bring him around the house, let alone ask him to move in with me after a few days of knowing him and only two conversations sprinkled in there, the rest being furnished in speculation and eyes entranced ostensibly by the wall but are actually entranced by the thought of Lucien Carr, the thought that requires a resting point for my vision to repose.

But speculation is a bore when the real model is out in the world for one to grasp and for one to adore, and that real model is wading among the books of the Paterson public library with a murderous cigarette strapped between his fingers and a devilish expression taped to his composure, in his swagger, in his clothing, in his speech, honeyed on some occasions and brittle on others just to dive into the low tones not yet explored by any other man, the low tones capable of slaying those vulnerable to his charm, or in other words, me.

And, like any normal human being, I am craving another taste of Lucien Carr, though he is not as pure as my parents would like, but I don’t talk to my parents anymore, so they don’t matter. I’m not ever bringing Lucien to meet them, if I can bring him to meet anyone anywhere, and that’s just the goal I hope to fulfill.

I’ve managed to sneak out of the house, past Edie’s docile figure reading the newspaper on the couch and past Jack’s slumbering body hidden beneath a mountain of blankets that must be as tall as they are because he won’t settle for anything less or anything more, even if there’s nothing more than his grand mountain he’s erected, and maybe they did, in fact, catch me shuffling against the walls to blend into the shadows of the abundant furniture, but they’re those kinds of people who want the best for me and mostly my social life, the kind of people who won’t object to my departure.

After remaining to be in a basement for almost my entire experience since the dreary halls of Columbia University teeming with people cramming for a test and people accepting that they will fail, Edie and Jack both recognize fully that my social life is something that needs to be excavated by citizens in the outside world. When they try to explain what that outside world is, I don’t really understand, because the closest I come to the exterior of the earth is the frequent comments my readers draft to let me know that I can improve their minds with practice and interesting facts and controversial opinions to those who tie themselves to conservative beliefs, but today I’m actually imbibing the outside world for myself, for my own senses, for my own repellant of artificiality sinking into the digital pages of poems about what life and dying and being reborn really are.

Today, I visit the library for the third time in the past few days, not for the books or for a quiet place to study, but for the company of the extraordinary librarian named Lucien Carr, whose resilience is the singular motive of my transport and the singular motive to justify the fact that I just barely finished my article on rhyme and meter after being charged with it a while ago, or at least a while ago for a very productive writer who is now deteriorating because of the man that I am indulging myself in this very day, with my toes tapping the pavement in the rhythm to my convulsing heartbeat on their journey to the library where I will greet the person who has been glued to my mind since we met.

I expect him to be here as he always is, just behind the counter and hidden by the shield of his book so that his ocean eyes are but a treat for those who daringly approach him like I did and have since done once more, but there is no third time from what I can detect. Lucien Carr is nowhere to be seen.

Disappointed, I grab the first book I can contact upon the shelves, a thriller about a murder in Victorian England judging from the cover and the terribly cliche title, and I then plunge into the leather of a chair directly across from the desk where Lucien usually works, either waiting for him to arrive or just wasting my time.

With Lucien here, my brain would be wailing with the sirens of a thousand ambulances seeking two thousand emergencies, but now that he’s absent for whatever deranged reason, probably out breaking the law with that flammable store opinions he tends to perpetually, my thoughts are docile and pleasant if they do at any point arise.

I’m beginning to enjoy the dormant experience of lounging in the library alone, without the exuberance of Lucien Carr to disturb me, and even this ghastly novel of the Victorian era is perfectly enhanced by a long awaited reprieve finally shuffling my way.

No one is bothering me, because research is a fundamentally quiet activity, and I’m reveling in this peace I’ve conducted for myself in Lucien’s vacancy, which I plan to preserve for as long as I can, but the slamming of the door on its hinges in its perpetrator’s frenzy ruffles the feathers of the isolated situation.

The man bursting through the door is none other than Lucien Carr, a tie nowhere near his neck to instead drip loosely towards the left side of his body, swinging from his arm a haggard leather bag stuffed with manuscripts somersaulting from its brim, a bird roosting in his hair as it styles the mismatched direction of the golden threads for its young. Lucien ambles towards the counter hectically, sweeping his bag across the mahogany as his manager emerges from the office tucked behind the desk.

“Lucien, why are you so late?” the manager yawps, much harsher than the voice Lucien fills my head with as a cigarette muffles his rioting words, and from that I’m surprised that Lucien still works here, his calm nature so disparate from that of his supervisor’s.

He’s thoroughly taken off guard, a product of sleep deprivation and too much caffeine to accommodate it, and he eventually catches himself, though his vision is a bit skewed from recently slipping out of the house and sprinting here before his manager can scold him, though it’s a bit too late for that, as he’s trapped within his punishments and somewhat unaware of what the hell is happening.

Lucien gestures vaguely around the burrow of hair sat atop his head, around the air, around all things ambiguous, as he attempts to sort through his alibis fumbling from his lack of sleep. “I was writing.”

“Well you have a job to do, Carr. Do try not to mess it up in the future, okay?”

Lucien nods solemnly, then migrating to the place his manager claims he’s supposed to be when he himself claims that his true location should be in a hall of fame somewhere and being told to fuck off with his impenetrable pretentiousness. He’s halfway around the desk when he captures me from the corner of his peripheral vision, and he stumbles over to me with a broad smile illuminating his cherubic features, including those godforsaken ocean eyes I absolutely worship.

“Allen Ginsberg? What a pleasure it is to see you here. How’s the article going?” He waits hopefully, a portion of that hope tinged by mandatory small talk and the other portion genuinely invested in what I have to offer, in what I’ve been procrastinating for.

“I finished it.”

“So are you here to research another topic?”

“No, actually I, um…” Spontaneity has never been my forte, and now I’m stuck in this mess of laboring to answer Lucien with a plausible phrase that isn’t the truth where I simply yearn to see him, and that plausible phrase suddenly comes to me without any warning, without permission to fly free as it immediately does. “I’m here to ask you if you’d like to go to lunch with me.”

I’m so fucking stupid. I shouldn’t ever let impulsiveness thwart my rationality like it just has. I should have protected myself better, but I didn’t, and now Lucien is tasked with the harrowing deed of declining in a manner that won’t injure my already wavering emotions, because there’s no way in hell that he would ever have lunch with me, and I’ve accepted that since the beginning, but my energetic words beg to differ and will do anything to receive their wishes.

“Oh.” A swallow caresses the walls of Lucien’s throat, flaunting his astonishment in unnerving harmony with his flexed brow.

I should have known that he would be freaked out by my proposal, however inadvertent that it was. I’ve only talked to this guy two other times besides this one, and I’m already asking for a date with him, if I would call it that anyway. Lucien Carr, the most brilliant man I’ve met in my entire life, does not like me. As a writer, he’s a master of psychology and is merely toying with my emotions. He has no veritable interest in me, no flickering ember dwelling inside of the Marianas Trench of his ocean eyes, no rose bud desiring to blossom into a flower splotched by both red and white who will never clash so that they may bolster one another’s beauty forever. That is not us, and that will never be us. Lucien has no love for me, and if he does, then it’s twisted and sick and a fucking experiment at best, not the events in a sappy romance novel bestowed upon the luckiest of people, because those people are fake and can receive whatever the hell it is that the authors want them to receive, whether that’s idolatry or death or tragedy for those they dragged into this wreck, and if that’s to become of Lucien and me, then I don’t want to cram him inside boxes too meager for his infinitely expanding heart.

It all starts with something as paltry as a lunch date, just as his heart started as the size of a dime. All of it will grow, with no exceptions. It will bask in the summer fragrance of grass and sunlight, and it will snare in the immoral barbed wire of miscommunication. That is, it will endure those haunting fluctuations if this lunch date is successful in committing this man to my possession as if it is fair to win him, as if he did not do the same for me, and that’s just a sign that things will not work out between us. Each relationship is doomed from its genesis, and therefore I am incredibly grateful that Lucien will reject the spark.

But his next two sentences change the game forever. “Well, yeah, sure. There’s a nice retro diner at the end of the block if you wanted to eat there.”

He just screwed himself to the demise of our friendship in the most painful fashion possible, in the eaves of a writer’s soul, _two_ writers’ souls. Writers are uncontrollable monstrosities who are not compatible with real human beings, so they confide in fiction and in the same mind who has fucked them relentlessly while muting their screams in a jar to save for later, for the occasion where the trials are at even higher stakes, when a day ago that would’ve never been persuasive. Lucien Carr is already dead, and I aided his downfall.

On the contrary, society would have us conceive that manners are more essential to life than literal life is, and Lucien doesn’t yet understand how much of a mess he’s found himself in from my own careless inquiries, so I have to pretend like I didn’t just pave the road to his murder.

“Yeah, that would be awesome.”

Cherishing a faint smile like it’s all he has, Lucien stalks towards the counter again to resume his duties or else be punished once more by his manager, and I obediently follow as he speaks. “You can hang out near the desk until I finish my shift, and then we can go.” He observes me for a few more moments before continuing to log his information into the library’s complex machines, catching only a smile who won’t leave me alone, and I suppose I don’t need it to, because it’s appropriate.

I can’t believe I asked out the boy of my dreams, and neither will Edie. That’s one hell of a dinner table story right there.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: this is even longer than the other chapter wh yt he fuck
> 
> logicism: the idea that mathematics are based on logic and that any mathematical problem can be reduced to logic
> 
> ~Dacaterer


	7. damn he thicc

Lucien may or may not have clocked out of his shift earlier than his shift actually ended, but I assure anyone who will listen that this was not my fault. Well, I didn’t do it directly, but I may have provided Lucien with a motive to leave prematurely, and that motive is our lunch excursion, which I wouldn’t really call a date yet, because dates progress to relationships of inexorable madness and the inevitable shitstorm of a breakup.

And despite my opposition towards this for fear of what could happen to us if we were to ever engage in such a relationship, Lucien walked to the retro diner with his arm slung around my back, and that may be more friendly than flirtatious, but it’s anyway suggestive of something I cannot yet decipher. He’s a trickster, twirling lies like a circus performer may twirl a baton, amazing the crowd as they wonder in awe how the magician could’ve done it, and I seem to be a part of that clueless audience.

Now that we’re seated at a table, Lucien hasn’t been able to rip his eyes from me, although I’m not that interesting, just some twenty-three year-old writer with glasses that are regularly skewed, and a whole lot of opinions bubbling inside of this short figure whom no one would suspect is a pot of annoyance.

The various sounds of the 50s hum in the background, replicated by aesthetic bloggers searching for the pastel grunge shit or whatever it is that they like while simultaneously ignoring the blatant racism and homophobia of that age because the vintage style is too much to deny. I find myself paying close attention to each beat, to each sound, to each nuance in the singer’s voice, picking apart the instruments one by one and listening solely to them for a few seconds before transitioning to another one.

I’ve attempted to eat the meal of a salad placed before me by the kind waitress who not once messed up the order, but Lucien’s heavy gaze weighs the world down until the fork is either lead or I’m now extremely weak. He doesn’t say anything, which makes this all the more unnerving, only his ocean eyes washing bitter saltwater over me with the hope that I’ll drown in it so that I will be claimed as his.

Even as he layers the lettuce leaves onto his fork, dotted by growths of ranch dressing, Lucien never departs from me, though I’m not doing anything worthy of note. I’m just trying to enjoy the meal that demanded a hell of a lot of courage to bring about, but it’s being spoiled by Lucien’s ambiguous, unceasing stare.

“Are you going to say something, or are you just going to drill me with discomfort?”

Lucien perpetuates his obnoxious game, except now an arrogant smile sloshes around his face as he chews a paltry serving of lettuce.

“Is this how you acquaint yourself with people? Because it sure as hell isn’t effective. You’re just creepy.”

Lucien, rolling his eyes, plunges his fork into the jungle of lettuce heaped on his plate, a surrender by my inability to play along. “I was testing how long you could sustain your sanity when I was presenting you with an unspecified expression over an expansive period of time. You know, what every friend should do before diving too deep.”

I’m a bit disappointed, because I couldn’t endure the entirety of the meal without cracking and commanding Lucien to tell me why it is that he’s been staring at me for the past seven and a half minutes with that ghost of cockiness faded into his countenance, and that surely means that Lucien isn’t looking for someone like me, someone who couldn’t pass his test.

“So are you going to drop me now that I’ve failed?”

A breathy burst of a laugh rinses his throat in wind, amused by my anxiously formulated conclusion. “No, of course not. You didn’t flunk, Allen, but you didn’t win, either. Flunking means you’re feeble minded, and winning means you’re far too stubborn or far too indifferent, all of which are unsuitable for a healthy relationship.”

“You must be great to be around,” I scoff as I regain bits and pieces of my security after that enigmatic ordeal.

Lucien shrugs. “Well you haven’t deserted me yet.”

And as much as I wish to uphold the veneer of independence around him, he’s absolutely correct. I haven’t deserted him, and I don’t plan on it, either. He’s my unwritten muse, per se, my guidance in a world where nothing is intelligible, where everything is a blur with no solid labels such as good or evil to usher us into sound decisions, where confusion reigns above us all and taunts us with the prospect of clear headedness, a prospect that is unimaginable in this man made underworld. I need someone like Lucien Carr to aid me when the bleakness of reality burns my eyes into blindness, when I stumble madly down the stairs and pray that I won’t tumble, when domestic shellshock consumes what I once thought I could preserve, when I am no longer a functional being. I need Lucien Carr, and deserting him is fucking stupid.

“And do you know why you haven’t deserted me?”

Of course I fucking know. I know it better than I know Edie or Jack or my parents who don’t mean a thing to me now that I’m free from their shackles. I know it whether reverted to shameful pasts or flown to unfamiliar futures, mechanisms of pain and mechanisms of faith. I know what it is like to be deserted, and I never want to know what it is like to desert someone else.

Lucien doesn’t know, only thinks that he knows, so I nod as if I am completely unaware of what this boy signifies to my tattered heart, and I allow him to revel in his misconceptions.

“I think the thing you’ll find with artists is that they indulge in the corporeal sensations, their fingers over your skin, adoring the scars they sprout on their mediums who required so much anguish that it’s magnificent, but with writers they can simply look at you the right way and commend you to their clutch. They know how to play you, Allen, and as you sit before a writer this very moment, I think you can surmise that you, too, have been fooled.”

So am I being fooled by psychology, or is Lucien Carr actually someone whom I can love? Is he being self-deprecating in the subtlest of ways, or is he proving that his skills sped up the process of attraction? With Lucien, you can never know.

“Yeah, you got me,” I chuckle in order to shield the doubts about what Lucien is claiming to be the case, rather than his starving esteem, and then our portion of the diner is wrapped in silence sparked by the cadence of our speech.

From what I can infer, Lucien probably despises silence, as he always has something to prove, something psychological, something philosophical, something beautiful, all components of himself gushing forth like a waterfall leading to the sharp rocks of elucidated reality below. The silence has reigned for far too long, and he’s gripping a hammer to smash it.

“Hey, how would you feel about moving in with me?”

The lettuce halts halfway to my mouth, collapsing with a clatter upon my plate that rattles most of the restaurant guests, but I can’t apologize with a body petrified by shock. Why would he want to live with me, the lonely hermit who only writes articles for my blog all day? Surely I would be the one vying for _his_ presence, not the other way around.

Lucien is ecstatic now, sorting through the details and accumulating confidence with each thought waltzing through his extraordinary head. “I have an apartment about two blocks away from the library that we can share.”

He’s so certain about all of this, despite the notion sprouting from an impulsive irrationality that demands to be heard, no matter how illogical it may be, and as much as I would love to live with him, the level of whimsicality is too risky for a stable environment where we can both thrive as much as the other.

“Why so sudden?”

“There’s so much to do, Allen!” Lucien exclaims, tipping back in his seat. “Just think about the possibilities — two writers, many ideas.”

“But I already live with people.”

I’m a crab locked inside of my shell by force, a crab who has been trained to adore it, to fear life without it, and now that Lucien has the guts to propose an alteration to that, I’m not quite sure if that’s a sound idea, whether that opinion was birthed from my metaphorical Stockholm syndrome or my human center of reasoning.

Lucien, however, is an erratic soul who only lives for new opportunities and the estrangement from the established, “Let me guess: you never leave the basement, and it wouldn’t be much of a change if you were to get up and leave without so much as a word to them about it.”

“Your perception skills have gone too far, you rat ass.”

Lucien giggles childishly, dipping his head towards his salad like a vandal guilty of the crime called humor, and maybe _that’s_ what I want to live with if I’m going to delve into this world of mixed vibes from writers drizzled with disparity atop puzzle pieces that nevertheless fit together like it was meant to be, and in the spur of the moment, I accept Lucien’s offer.

“Let’s get packing then.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: okay do you see my tears I love these two
> 
> aestheticism: study of beauty and taste
> 
> ~Dacrabbypatty


	8. pack for hell

The house is empty when I stumble into it with new ambitions, Edie and Jack gone somewhere to rekindle the old flame that I’ve witnessed burn out solely from the limited experiences of sneaking out of the house to do some “research” at the library, and I suppose I’m glad for them, because their absence leaves me alone to pack my bag to later pour out in my new home of Lucien’s cozy apartment.

On one hand, I wish they were here so that I could brag about how I made so much of a friend that he’s practically begging for me to move in with him after only a few days of knowing him, but on the other hand, I’d rather be free of their questions pounding my brain who doesn’t have any answers for them, because I honestly don’t know what the hell I’m doing myself, but humans enjoy impulsivity because it feels nice in the moment, and even if I will crumble by the time I come to my senses, right now it seems like a pretty amazing idea, and Lucien is rushing me too expeditiously for an effective protest.

Lucien, while whirring his hands in strange movements to propose that I should move faster, is simultaneously imbibing his surroundings, the old fashioned layout of it all, with the creaking wicker chairs and light blue fabrics clawing at the walls and at the windows to embrace portions of the sunlight to protect the house from it, and I must admit that it is a very beautiful space that Edie has constructed through hours of shopping and an exhausted Jack by her side, but Lucien doesn’t utter a single word about it, though he’s nevertheless impressed by it in the slightest of fashions and without speech, as the rest of his cognition is being consumed by ordering me to hurry the hell up or else Edie will crash our party and ask why there’s a strange man in their house planning the ostensible kidnapping of her roommate.

Part of me is devouring as much time as I can just to annoy the frantic Lucien Carr who won’t stop chattering about how Edie won’t like him and how Jack will probably beat him up for whatever deranged reason saturated by the common paranoia of a writer deluded enough to draft ballads of tragedy as Lucien most definitely does, and he may see through my plan, now or down the road, but if he hasn’t acted upon it, then my antics can’t be that disastrous, and I can continue to harvest the time I need to pack my entire life into one bag.

But Lucien loves to play people with the psychological secrets he’s earned from his writing and his research to write something better than before, as a writer is never content with what words they are offered, so I might as well snag the opportunity to play him, too. I can pretend, just as he pretended to be interested in me, though that may simply be _my_ writer’s paranoia.

“I apologize for taking so long, Lucien. It’s not like I have to move my whole life to an unfamiliar place with an unfamiliar man.”

I’m not so concerned with whether Lucien is a serial killer or not, considering I first worried if he would think that about _me_ , but he’s not the one moving into my dingy basement, rather the one defacing and criticizing it, so I can claim higher advantages to guilt trip him into imitating meticulous steps to ensure that I feel safe in his apartment, because it’s obvious that beneath that layer of sarcasm and phlegmaticness he actually cares a lot, and from that generosity, I can play him like he played me, and I opt for the sardonic route of latent fear.

“What, are you packing a hotline to the police, too?” Lucien tosses a stray superhero t-shirt to the side, attempting to organize something to speed up the process. “And you live in a freaking basement of all places. What do you have to pack? The nonexistent remnant of your soul?”

Affecting much more than a tossle of his hair with my grand slap to his head, I bark, “Haha, very funny.”

“But it’s true,” he mutters, hands bolted to his hips as he spins around with them still attached. He is then attracted to a meager object on my only dresser, whose contents are limited yet depended on, and he shuffles over to inspect it.

The object is nothing special to an outsider as Lucien is, merely a cat blown from fire and glass by a fastidious worker, but he’s anyway intrigued by its shape, by its labyrinthine coat carved with the phobia of damage throughout the entire manufacturing process, its eyes as daring as my companion’s, and I observe that with Lucien’s feline features, it sort of resembles him in other ways as well, but I don’t explain that, because apparently comparing people to animals is rude, despite animals being creatures so elegant and convoluted and wonderful, much gentler than humans could ever be.

To him, it’s a tenuous curio only preserved because glass is the enemy of a garbage can or because someone upstairs would be devastated at its removal from the basement, yet he’s somehow fascinated with every meager aspect of it, and I don’t understand why.

“What’s so exceptional about that?” I inquire, paused between the frames of loading a bundle of socks into my bag.

Lucien pivots around, puckered and youthful, surprised that I caught him in the act of examining my glass cat. “Oh, nothing special to me. You, however…” The cat levitates in his genial touch, insides exposed by the knife of light goring its fragile body as Lucien searches for a more...intricate approach to it, and I’m beginning to question whether or not it actually does mean something to him, or whether he’s intrigued by it and hopes to find meaning. He eventually returns the object to its prior location on the dusty dresser, humming faintly. “It’s something special to _you_ , though.”

Yes, it _is_ something special to me, something that I’ve cherished for years and years. It was given to me by the owner of an antique store that was going out of business, and that owner was my best friend during my childhood. When my parents were being insolent jerks, he was there with a story about his various travels around the world, where I prayed to visit but haven’t yet, even in adulthood, because Paterson, New Jersey makes a pushover of us all. When I felt unsafe in my own mind, he pointed to a notebook that could safely guard my words for when I ache to hug my literary darlings and my literary demons again and accept them all for what they signify to who I am as a person. When he was struggling, not me, he still contemplated my journeys, my accomplishments, my downfalls, and when he was drifting rapidly towards homelessness, he relinquished one of his only possessions to me so that _I_ could remember him — a cat, agile for bouncing through their issues, secretive for selecting what is fallacy and what is crucial, keen for recognizing where I can profit off of my misery as each writer does, everything that he wanted me to be but couldn’t teach me because his financial stability was declining towards a place devoid of solvency, and though I couldn’t help him, he helped me, and I’ve kept the cat ever since.

But I don’t know Lucien, and I’m not sure if I ever will. He isn’t entitled to my secrets, to my past, even if he assumes that he is just because he can dig it out of me through psychology

I shrug, waving away from it. “Yeah, it’s been on my dresser for years, throughout different houses and financial situations, all of that adult crap.”

Lucien is immune to transparency and seeks something more. “And it’s special because it’s a reminder of change to you, of the shifting tides creased by the moon whose geological nuances you love to drink in at night as that same change buzzes past you, and you grow. You grow into a young man, into a writer, into a linguist, a logophile who bleeds that idolatry onto parchment as the visionary scraps for your readers. That is you, and that object, however plain it may seem to others, is part of you, so it is special.”

Deflecting his thorough (and incredibly veritable) analysis of something as imperative as my life, I joke, “Can I keep _any_ secrets?”

Lucien winks, swaying on his limber feet yet never stumbling. “Secrets are not secrets if they can be decrypted.”

Because if they are decrypted, one doesn’t care enough about keeping them hidden. I know how this maxim operates, and I know that _Lucien_ knows how this maxim operates, and he’s quite the proponent of broadcasting how much he comprehends, so of course he’d tell me that he comprehends this.

I’m once again defeated by the unnatural inference skills of my companion, so I digress. “Pack the cat please.”

Now quiet after realizing the gravity of what he said, Lucien handles the cat cautiously all the way into my luggage, which is still only half full with the pettiness of the items I store in my basement, and he erects a fire pit of fabric around the glass object, where the cat becomes what built it, though he is still hushed. Lucien Carr, who is a man of no regrets, is for some reason brooding about what he said to me, cognizant of the first recognizable mistake in his life, and he’s somehow nervous, too. His hands rope around each other, twisting and compacting and spaghettifying, though not enough, because his skin is still intact, and there’s no use for that extra blood when all that’s in him is remorse.

“I-I’m sorry, Allen, for being so insensitive.” Lucien’s words are like glue, velcroed to the walls of his throat and refusing to unlatch, but he’s endeavoring to remove them, because he cares enough to amend his mistakes. “Your personal information is not mine to deduce, and I apologize.”

I know how difficult this was for Lucien to expel from a mouth who only shouts about what he could do, not what he has done, a mouth who grips the glamor of suicide in a branch of smoke and nicotine, a mouth who narrates stories so riveting that they seem almost fictitious, but not a mouth who tells someone they’re sorry, and to do so is a trial unmatched by the common man.

I nod, focus trained on my bag with a staleness in my muscles, inert and thoughtful. “Thank you, Lucien.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: wow is this not character progression lmao it's not like I'm a terrible writer hahahRHh:RIGHt
> 
> epistemology: the study of knowing
> 
> ~Dicknoodle


	9. welcome to the cesspool

Lucien is as nervous as I’ve seen him, shivering not at the November chill wafting around the city street but at the gravity of what he’s done, but it’s not a regret dampening his shoes like rainwater infecting cotton socks, rather a fear that his apartment is inadequate, that he is inadequate, that I will hate living with him and immediately renege on my promise to reside in a place that seems cozy enough from what average praises I’ve heard of it, and it’s somewhat disheartening to see that Lucien Carr, a man who never backs down and never steps away from his previous words, is doing both of those things.

I don’t say anything to him, though, because I can infer from his bold character that his masculinity is too fragile for the comforting vows of a friend who is inching closer to his heart with each day, and he would probably fire back expeditiously with a philosophical spiel about how we are all going to die one day and how his anxiety means nothing in something as near as our immediate future, and I’m not prepared to deal with that, especially since he expects me to sort through whatever the hell it is that he’s rambling about as if it’s relevant to what we’re discussing at the current moment, because as far as I can tell, Lucien isn’t comprised solely by philosophy — he has organs, he has blood, and he has a brain that can fabricate lies to hide it all, but philosophy is only a quadrant of that brain, which means that he has other portions of himself that need to be properly addressed, whether that’s by a professional psychologist or his new roommate.

I’m going to enjoy dwelling in the home of this living embodiment of poetry itself, though I’m not quite sure what it is that he writes, if he’s even selected poetry at all, and I realize that it will be a struggle on both parts, but what writer isn’t a mess? There will either be a chaotic double trouble that I will require myself to clean up after each shitstorm, or there will be complete and utter oblivion for some inexplicable reason that haunts us both but is never elucidated, a form of subtle teamwork that we never would’ve predicted though cherish nonetheless, and it might be terrifying, but everything wonderful in life is always a bit of that.

Why would you be a flower when you can be a storm? Why would you be alluring when you can bring men to their knees? Why would you allow others to bestow qualities upon you when you can snare them yourself? Do not settle for the products of people you do not understand. Drain the juice from existence and not once gag at its bitterness. Be your own set of factors. That is what Lucien and I are striving to achieve by residing in the same cramped quarters for who knows how long, maybe until we crumble like I know we will, because that’s inevitable in every relationship, though I shouldn’t be spoiling memories that haven’t occurred yet, as I’m becoming even more nihilistic than Lucien is.

And Lucien Carr is also beautiful as he promenades across the sidewalk beside me, hands on a swing at the playgrounds of our childhoods, nervousness deteriorating with each second we spend next to each other without a single complaint from anyone about our near future, and we’re cooling down from the heat of our miniature existential crisis to the point where Lucien has begun to speak again.

“Just to warn you, the apartment is incorrigibly messy, so watch your step if there are any loose manuscripts or coffee stains. I don’t really know what’s there, as I was rushing out of the house to the library after a prolonged stretch of ebony skies and spite.”

I laugh, propelling my arms back and forth with more velocity than before. “It can’t be much worse than my basement.”

My basement hovers between total pandemonium and just enough clear space to accommodate my constant position near my computer that also reaches towards the bed and the door so that I may escape to seize food and then promptly return to my writing, and that’s about all I need for my chambers, but I assume Lucien isn’t living in a basement and demands an elongated area for a kitchen, a bedroom, a bathroom, and a sitting room at the least, and more space means more clutter, whereas my mind at the computer is the only thing in the basement that’s cluttered for me.

“That’s what they all say,” Lucien negates, “and they’re all completely wrong.”

Who would be there to say that? Lucien is a solitary man, something I noticed when I first conversed with him at the library a few days ago, as he was dog-eared into the shadows of the desk with a book whom he never stowed away to assist the library patron called Allen Ginsberg who is now his new roommate, and I must’ve been his premier of those, because that level of excitement I witnessed at the diner surrounding living arrangements is typical of those with a penchant for first times.

“What, have you tried living with other people?” I scoff.

Lucien is the person to be adventurous, never quieted by a fear of anything, because if you were to examine his brain, the amygdala would be on a permanent vacation in hell, and even when Lucien daringly descends towards the same destination, he’ll stay away from it then, so there’s nothing to propose that Lucien has never desired a roommate until now. That, or I’m the special one who eroded the last phobia he sustained in a matter of days.

“No, because I’ve earned quite the reputation from house guests who proclaim that exact phrase you just did.”

This can be resolved, though it’s too late for that, but if Lucien is willing to broach my past mistakes, then I can broach his. “Have you even tried asking?”

A churning wave of uneasiness collapses over Lucien’s face, a hatred for admitting his faults. “Well...no.”

“Then I’m glad to be the first.”

Truly, I am, because Lucien’s life buzzes by so hastily that I have no idea what the hell is going on. He’s done it all, coming back for more if it was worthwhile but never lingering for too long because there are other events in which to partake, and each day he devours more and more of the marrow of life with no remaining land that he hasn’t conquered, so to find that the terrain of sharing an apartment with someone is unvanquished is amazing to me, because I could be the first time that he loves.

This first time might not be so glamorous as I had once foreseen, as we’re steadily approaching his apartment, which is obviously shielded behind a veneer of elegance when the insides must be atrocious, like pathogens in water that disperse cholera to the unsuspecting victims who live off of its source.

The exterior is lovely, the traditional model of those circumscribing it, with a horizontal array of alabaster panels and navy blue window accessories and navy blue accents and navy blue everywhere that white isn’t mandatory, which leads me to believe that Lucien _really_ loves navy blue, as no one else on the street matches his hectic style.

It’s evident that Lucien has removed a lick of time from his day to garden, though the bushes planted in front of the house like shoes are still healthier than the bushes of other people his age but not healthy enough to suggest that Lucien hires a rare groundskeeper. To be honest, he probably just dumps chemicals he knows to be fruitful onto the plants and moves on with his busy day of writing and tending to obnoxious library patrons who don’t understand the difference between poetry and prose.

I can deal with scraggly bushes. They’re no problem, just as long as the rest of the estate is sufficient, because if it’s not, then I might be living in the sharp leaves of the greenery rather than the creaking twin sized bed that’s in every obsessive writer’s home, and I’ll soon discover where I’ll be staying for as long as Lucien and I share the apartment, as he’s twisting the knob to the front door where the game changes forever.

Okay, so I was hopelessly incorrect. From the moment I step inside with my fingers stained ivory by fearful compression, I recognize that this place is much worse than my basement, but it’s nothing that a bit of tidying can’t fix up, though “a bit” is an inappropriate phrase for this wreck of an apartment.

Lucien endures a tiring life, so I pardon him partially for the misshapen state of his home, but there are still unexcusable details about it that I just cannot ignore, no matter how frantic he is to meet his self-imposed deadline on whatever draft he’s penning with those wondrous words of his, like the soda can tabs reclining on a section of his porch that spell out the single word of “why”, which I suppose is an interesting question, suitable for him and his philosophy, but lord knows the Homeowners Association will be showing up at his doorstep with a knife to his neck pretty damn soon if he continues to showcase these indecipherable acts.

Conceivably, there will be many more of them, as this is only the beginning, and I’m sure I’ll be acquainting myself with someone affiliated with the HOA just so my rowdy friend won’t be evicted from our only place to stay besides the dingy basement that can only fit one lonesome writer, not two who add a ruckus when together, but I’d much rather make a ruckus in a wide apartment so the echoes of our screaming only clang against the walls, and this is the perfect place to do it, imitating the dying our minds have been experiencing since we breathed in the chemicals of this earth with the tattoo of blood from our mothers upon fresh skin that his weathered ever since, but all things cease six feet under the dirt, and let’s just call this apartment our grave.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I like the idea of Lucien having a fiery vendetta with the HOA
> 
> fallibilism: the belief that no knowledge is definite
> 
> ~Dickota


	10. Part Two

_ _

_The broken places are often overlooked, so it is in the broken places that the fallen_

_can begin to rebuild and surprise those who shoved them into this turmoil._

Chapters: 9 - 24

Songs: So Far (It's Alright) by the 1975


	11. cutthroat kitchen material

****

I’m still caught in the haze that is Lucien’s apartment, with all of its dirtiness and its sordidness and its resemblance to the fiery depths of hell where our minds have been all along, and everything feels distorted, like a wobbly lens has been slid over the main lens to warp my surroundings towards delirium and a delusion that I am either dying or losing my wits with the speed of a cargo train shipping them away, because none of this makes sense, both this apartment and my reasoning for deciding to live in it with another person who isn’t one of my mental demons.

Why would I do that? I’m such a solitary person, locked up in a basement by choice, not because I’m being forced into it even by something as minor as subliminal messaging or the desire for captivity by effect of Stockholm syndrome, but now I’m out in the real word. I met someone whom I would willingly call my friend, and now I’m living in the apartment that is too blurry for its own good, and I have no idea what the hell is happening to me right now.

My blood cells are drops of a poison that no one can place. My lungs are the tattered remnants of a house after a storm. My heart is the dilapidated remnant of a uniform after war. It is required to be there, but it is no longer functional, and no one can see that underneath that uniform there is a gaping bullet wound that’s selling all my secrets to the grave. My life is in ruins, in rags, in the hell that I have created to punish myself, and I am finally drowning in it, in my long awaited success.

Yet this isn’t where I’m supposed to be. This is all off, nothing like the underworld that I had imagined since I learned to imagine death and all things tragic that really aren’t tragic to those who want it yet never receive it because the world has a knack for teasing us with our greatest faiths. This is not that, nowhere near it. I’m confused in this location, but I’m not confused enough to ignore the fact that this apartment is not where I should be.

This path I’ve chosen irrationally to follow will lead me straight to a cesspool who might be better than this place in the way that it’s much clearer, because in this place there are plates all across the carpeted floor with probably molding hardwood underneath, and in this place there is the haunting threat of paper cuts from the scarlet inked manuscripts piled on the various chairs of the apartment, and in this place there is a man whom I met only a few days ago but is now my roommate, and I’m fucking petrified of what will happen to me and to him, as if the house is a monster seeking us both with the sharp teeth of broken glass on guard at the windowsill, with the sandpaper tongue of the carpet in the entrance hall, with the swaying chandelier arming itself for destruction upon our unsuspecting heads marked by crumbling halos, and I don’t trust this place.

How can I trust anything when I can’t even trust my mind, the core part of who I am, the one who controls my bodily operations, the one who controls what I think, how I act, what I decide, though this recent decision is faulty? How can I not be clutching the walls to break free of the approaching locus of the couch only to step away from that wall for fear that it will consume me, too? How can I settle down when Lucien is shaking me and telling me that there’s nothing, because I see it all, and that certainly isn’t a nothing or even a quiet existence at all?

There’s a jolting in my bones, like a thousand doctors huddled in a hospital room with the emergency of a failing heart, with their paddles poised to shock me back into living a life I don’t want to live anymore, living a life that ushered me towards this route of fogginess and confusion. There are hands on me, suffocating and sharp, clenching and retracting like atria and ventricles pulsing in unison to sustain something, that something being my perpetual terror, attempting to pull me towards something, and their efforts shoot light into my blearing eyes until it’s all like walking on the sun, my feet crisping and flying away into more and more lava, my corneas burning and burning and burning towards ebony, towards surrender, towards complete and utter decay, towards everything that I’ve hidden from, everything that I hate, everything that I’ll admit I’m scared of, everything that injects tears into my cheeks and injects positions of a ball into my legs and injects the singular notion that I am not where I am supposed to be, as I’ve said time and time again.

And all of the sudden it just halts, like a meteor being pinched by the dictator of the universe as if it were a fly, and the colors of reality tiptoe from the shadows of the underworld to greet me again, a child guilty of a crime they did not commit who is finally secure enough to peek out from the corner, and then there’s Lucien, the beautiful boy with ocean eyes and golden threads woven into his scalp with the precision of a goddess, who is ostensibly scalded by red under his foliaceous lashes that now cease to transmit energy to feeble birds like they almost always do, and the confusion returns for a round two, unsatisfied with their knock out in the prior period.

“Allen!” Lucien yelps as he rattles me, a dog shrouded by both the fear of the transpiring events and the fear that it was their fault, and I want to explain to him that I don’t know what was just happening and if it was his fault or not, but he’s so concerned about me that I doubt he was associated with the horrors I have recently witnessed.

“Y-yeah...I just...I’m just nervous about being here. I’m not sure if this is the right place for me. This is all spinning by me so quickly. I, um...I don’t have time to comprehend it all.”

That’s the best excuse I can formulate in such little time, but I assume that it’s what actually sparked the birth of this storm, so I stick with it as my alibi, because that actually seems logical, and I need logical things in my life after experiencing that mania.

“You’ll acclimate to it, Allen,” Lucien reassures me with a jittering pat on the back, still rocked by my temporary absence from reality. “But what the hell was that?”

I shove a smile out of the slot of my mouth, forcing solace onto someone who needs it. “A delusion of a writer.”

Lucien is silent, unsure of how to proceed when the salient piece of his personality is being bold and devoid of regret, so he elects to alter the subject. “Do you...do you want some dinner? You’re probably starving after that whole ordeal.”

If I were him, I’d also divert the subject, because Lucien wouldn’t understand what’s whipping through my head. Writers, who are tasked with understanding the horrors of the human mind, don’t know as much as the public thinks they do. They know their own struggles and the struggles of their friends, but they do not know all struggles. That is why there is no cure to them, why illness never becomes stale, as it is always mutating, always plaguing, always surprising those who don’t deserve it, and Lucien is not close enough of a friend to understand, either, so I only comply with his offer of dinner.

“Yes, please, if you could.” I follow Lucien to the kitchen, where he branches off towards the cabinets and I branch off towards a chair at the dining table to collect myself, and I require a steady flow of outward breath before I can utter two mundane words: “Thank you.”

Lucien strangles his activity of procuring utensils from the cabinet into inertion, darkened by acute contemplation. “Yeah, no problem.” His voice is as frail as I’ve ever heard it, , but why? Why does he give a single care about a screw up like me? He’s a writer! He’s destined for acclaim with those magnificent words of his. He can stir people’s minds so that they finally think for once. Why is he wasting his time on me? He shouldn’t care, but he does, and I’m beginning to hate him for it, as I don’t deserve anything he’s given me, whether that’s a life or a house or an ability to ponder the complexities of existence through the metaphysics he spews out to seem simple when no one else can see it as he can with the blindfolds snapped over their eyes for protection against what is truly here and what is truly dangerous and what is truly their cause of death.

But I yearn to see what Lucien speaks of each and every day I greet him under the umbrella of secrets that we know but the rest of the world doesn’t, secrets of poetry, of loss, of amphigories, secrets of drowning under our mothers’ cradle in betrayal, secrets of details we click onto our papers to remain relevant, secrets as banal as Lucien cooking poorly in the kitchen just to provide me with a refuel after my delusional excursion, because though he is not a master chef (nowhere near it, in fact), he cares enough to try.

“How chivalrous of you,” I jest while sifting the stray napkins on the table between my fingers on the pursuit of something to stimulate my restless thoughts.

Never pivoting towards me to address my thanks, Lucien rapidly deadpans, “Chivalry is dead, and so am I.”

I skew my face in bewilderment. “Well okay then.”

Too spontaneous to cleave to a single subject for longer than two minutes, Lucien tries his luck with small talk. “Have you gotten any responses on your rhyme and meter article?”

Ah, yes, the rhyme and meter article, the article that brought us together when we first met in the library a few days ago, the article that I thought I would hate researching because every book will praise rhyme and meter for doing nothing besides enforcing mandatory learning principles upon young poets of this generation and older poets who couldn’t escape it, but now I’m grateful that an audacious reader suggested it to me, because now I’ve met the most brilliant person I’ve ever seen in my entire life, and he has no idea that this article ignited this relationship.

“Yeah, my blog is pretty popular, so I receive lots of comments daily.”

The spoon Lucien is utilizing to stir the uncooked rings of pasta collides with the bowl, luring a sharp sound from the metal. Did he not think I could operate a successful blog? Yeah, I know I’m awkward, but awkward people can be absolute legends on the Internet, and Lucien seems to think I’m intelligent, though intelligence is defined by the individual, not some old twat wasting away in a college as ancient as him, who thinks that rhyme and meter are still fundamental to merited literary works, but Lucien has faith in me, a faith that I may squander with my foolishness but a faith that guides me towards motivation, albeit he’s astonished that I could accomplish the title of running a famous blog.

Lucien scours his mind for a speedy recovery, which he discovers quicker than the lightning of his ecstatic eyes. “Well if you’ve researched rhyme and meter so thoroughly, then what, do you suppose, is the meter for degeneration? Is it hasty so that it induces a scare, or is it gradual so that the victim can witness as they waste away into nothing?”

I consider this for a moment, just what Lucien wants for his pretentious nature somatized in these weighted questions, but I cannot shape an answer, much like most of the people he approaches with loaded philosophy, so I play him as he played me to brush off my cluelessness. “I think you’ll have to figure that out yourself, Lucien.”

Lucien spins away from the stove, hands choking the ledge of the counter, dangerously close to the heat, and he drapes himself elegantly in the most devilish smirk he owns. “You’re on, Allen Ginsberg.”

And perhaps I should’ve known the wine paired with studying the meter of deterioration, but I was too caught up in his beauty to notice.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Lucien can be so sweet I'm just
> 
> solipsism: the belief that the self is everything and nothing else exists beyond that
> 
> ~Duckota


	12. Lucien is a fuckboy

I’ve barely been allotted any time to recover before Lucien is bouncing all around the apartment with an idea in that buzzing mind of his, and since it is so buzzing and hectic and won’t leave him alone, it’s his duty to spill the idea with as much fervor as he can before it passes by, cascading into the void of no return.

This time, he’s rambling about playing a game of questions, where we ask each other things about our personalities and our hypothetical decisions and our desires and all of that shit that strengthens friendships and eliminates the barriers that maybe some of us wanted to keep, but if I’m to understand Lucien enough to help him, and if he is to do the same, then this is a perfect activity for that, as our friendship is currently flimsy and childish and built on the foundation of impulse, but this will construct it again like a fortress.

I’m trying to enjoy a nice time in Lucien’s cluttered living room, but this child of a man is tugging at me to play the game of questions with him, and I finally relent, sliding off of the chair and onto the floor like a chunk of gelatin who has lost all faith in their life.

“The thing about journalists is that they’re always scouring the earth for their next big scoop. So, Allen Ginsberg, what would you like to know about this arrogant hermit living in the hell that is Paterson, New Jersey?” Lucien stares at me for a moment, as if expecting _me_ to say something out of my own volition when all I wish to do is read about ancient civilizations, a book I randomly selected from the piles in Lucien’s wobbling bookshelf, and I’m about to tell him to fuck off, but he eventually speaks his own words. “Shall we proceed, Allen Ginsberg?”

Was he searching for my consent? If so, I’ll give it to him, but I’d much rather be doing other things. On the contrary, Lucien is terribly excited about playing this game, so I reply, “Yep, go for it.”

Stirred by my approval, Lucien claps his hands together. “Then let’s get started with something easy: what’s your favorite color? Mine is white, because it’s a blend of everything that could ever be.”

Typical scholar Lucien Carr, flagrant about what he knows and silent about what he doesn’t, and that leads many to believe that he knows everything that there is to know, which I understand is completely incredulous, though others don’t, so Lucien is subtly laboring to convert me to their terrain of obliviousness, but all I do is laugh internally at his explanation for something as mundane as his favorite color. Two can play at this game, though, and I’ll shake his world with the opposite answer as his.

I endeavor to mask my smile while I spew this philosophical bullshit at a susceptible victim, and I somehow manage it with an inch left to spare. “My favorite color is black, because it proves that even in absence we can create beauty. We can attribute qualities to the void and shun the forces that claim it’s impossible. We no longer trip in the ebony, rather utilize it as paint and inspiration, utilize it to dye the fabrics that hug our bodies, utilize it to fill the world with more than ever before.”

My companion is silent, a quieted gasp hung against his mouth, and fearing the demise of his reputation, he finally speaks. “Well it seems that we are now rivaling as the echelons of pretentiousness,” Lucien admits, teeth churning with the chipped pieces of a smile, and I only smirk to myself.

“Choose one sense to live without,” I order, recognizing that this will infuriate Lucien beyond compare and trigger an entire spiel about how he requires all of them to remain pure or some shit, and that’s exactly what I receive.

“How can I choose to relinquish a core part of me? How will I view the world in all its entirety?” Lucien’s brows clip together as if by a closepin, utterly disgusted by my inquiry. “You’re fucking mad, Allen.”

I laugh with the pleasure derived from knowing just how Lucien would react to this, and it’s quite humorous to see him hectic about a question that he probably won’t answer in the end but a question that he’ll ponder for days after this until he gives up and says he’ll disown them all so he won’t have to experience the weight of this topic, a weight that isn’t so overwhelming to me.  
“I’d remove my taste, because it’s not like I go around licking the world.”

“Unfaithful swine,” Lucien accuses. “Let’s move on from this treachery. What’s the wildest thing you’ve done? For me, it’s breaking past all of my barriers to emerge as a god.”

Once again, Lucien warps a playful game of questions into an opportunity to share his philosophical motivational speeches with someone who doesn’t give a single fuck about them, and I roll my eyes before feeding his ego even more. “The wildest thing I’ve done…” I dunk a finger in the cushion of my lips, pondering the question and then clasping Lucien’s gaze with a faint smile seasoning my demeanor. “Meeting you, of course.”

Embarrassment rouges Lucien’s cheeks, which he endeavors rigorously to shield from me before I notice it, but it’s too late for that, as I’m already as proud as Lucien usually is, and he knows this, so he attempts to divert the subject, serving it with a crack in his voice. “What’s your best memory? I personally love the time when I rode down the hill and crashed into a stop sign.” He’s frantic, which he usually never is, so it’s my time to play him.

“I think we’ve formed some great memories together.” I wink at him, and he responds with a prolonged groan and the bang of a random fork against the wall.

“God damn it, Allen! Why do you have to make everything gay?” Lucien jests, unwittingly tipping back and pouring onto the floor in a supine position in which one would observe the stars swimming through manmade pollution at night, and that’s where he stays for a few moments, mollifying the conversation to art. “But we _have_ formed some great memories, haven’t we?” He glances over at me from the same pose, eyes rinsed by a child-like hope.

I nod while my hand inadvertently meanders towards Lucien’s hair, weaving in and out of his golden locks as if I’m constructing a cloak to hide us from the world. We say nothing, both relishing the moment of our corporeal bond in shivers and in fluttering heartbeats and in total repose upon the panels of the apartment floor, and now that we’re settled in peace, I propose another question.

“If you could break any law, what would it be?” I notice Lucien contemplating this before it’s his turn, whereas I already have my answer fresh in my mind. “You’re going to say something wild, but my answer is that I’d rather stay away from crime of any sort.”

“As if rhyme and meter aren’t crimes against humanity,” Lucien mutters, then flicking his body back up to reply to my question. “Speaking of rhyme and meter, what if we abandoned them? What if we broke not the law but the parochial minds of those ancient folks rotting in universities? We could start a literary revolution, Allen. Just think about it.”

I grow uneasy with each level Lucien’s elation ascends, because he is a man of risks, but I am a man of careful planning with each step mapped out for success. We’re not compatible when we work together on grand ideas such as these, as the movements are all off. I am just a lowly journalist who calls himself a poet, and I’m not really certain what Lucien is in a literary sense, and we aren’t important to anyone. Yes, my blog is popular, and yes, Lucien is absolutely brilliant, but other people possess those bonuses, too. What makes us so special? Our determination? Because only one of us has that, and it’s the one who isn’t careful enough to sustain it.

“Probably not, Lucien,” I counter.

“Mull it over and see what you think, yeah?” He anticipates my permission but carries on when he doesn’t receive it from this hermit of a companion he’s selected to live with. “In the meantime, how would you like to be remembered? Certainly for a literary revolution, yes? Not because you wrote an article on rhyme and meter that made a desolate few think about it and turn away from those principles without so much as a protest towards their teachers’ misinformed pedagogy.”

I’m not accepting this literary revolution that Lucien is proposing, so I only shrug. “I’d actually prefer to be forgotten.”

“Aww, come on!” Lucien rocks back on his feet, and a magnet on the ceiling tugs his arms upward. “Where’s the fun in that?”

“Where’s the fun in having your mind picked apart by people who just want to sound smart?” I didn’t start writing to have fun. I started writing to feel something on the paper that I had felt long before in my heart, and Lucien needs to comprehend that I’m not looking for fame with what I feel, only an outlet in which to channel those feelings.

This is the first time I’ve won over Lucien, but it isn’t as boisterous as I thought it would be. Rather, the minimal light in the room has been tightly pinned against the walls to desert us for the hue of the abyss, and suddenly that black isn’t so charming anymore. I abhor being in this state, so once again I distribute yet another foolish question.

“Do you find beauty in me?” I ask timidly, terrified at the future response that will most definitely be either a letdown or a sugarcoated lie that both of us know is false.

Lucien scampers from his position in the void, scooping me in his palms. “Well, yes,” he confesses. “I find beauty in everything, _especially_ you.”

And that’s the best we can do for broken people.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: this chapter is so cute I'm
> 
> perspectivism: only people are real, only people have value, only people have free will
> 
> ~Dakotapillar


	13. go to sleep, white devil

I haven’t yet unpacked by clothes since I arrived at Lucien’s apartment, because first I was criticizing both the exterior and the interior of the place, and then I was practically losing my mind in a pit of irrationality, and finally I settled down for a dinner of spaghetti rings that was far from virtuoso in the culinary field thanks to Lucien’s absence of time spent on writing manuscripts that he always trashes and slanders for being inadequate when they’re probably the most beautiful set of words I’ve ever read in my life, though he won’t allow me to read them anyway, so it seems that all is strange in this man and his apartment.

But now that the roaring impulsivity of our evening has sputtered into a gradual death tinted by quietness and fading laughs, and after a few hours of sitting on the couch and discussing things that no one else would think of discussing, I noticed that the light is retreating from the skies to make way for melanoid waves of fire who humans constantly adore within the blades of grass surrounding their tender heads, and it’s time to rest, as today has been very strenuous to say the least, and I can feel the purple rising from underneath my aging skin whom I have tortured with sleep deprivation and no apologies, but I figure that I can’t sustain restlessness forever, and this day has taught me that sleep is a wondrous activity for writers who know nothing of it.

This excursion that doctors claim is extremely beneficial to my declining health is a motive to unload the items I shifted from the basement and into Lucien’s apartment, and I chiefly scour the fabric laden contents for my toothbrush buried in a plastic bag to preserve it against the ineffective laundry job I often do to pass the time when I’m starved of inspiration for something to write, because although I have millions of people flooding my inbox with comments, laziness is much more of a friend than they will ever be.

I search for a while before stumbling across the toothbrush finally, and I find that the forest of bristles who previously stood straight up in proudness is partially battered by the pressure of the rest of my clothes and the glass cat that I should consider placing on Lucien’s dresser for him to discover with a smile printed on his angelic face as he realizes what the familiarly unfamiliar object is, but my toothbrush is nothing special compared to what I’m now witnessing in Lucien’s bathroom, with his utensils looking as though they had recently emerged from war with fatal injuries as they bleed out into the sink yet never die, because Lucien always has enough morphine and enough medicine to sustain them, rotating through their battalion on a specific schedule so that each one is properly tended to, so that each one maintains a life in unison with him, and it’s somewhat deranged, but it’s all the way Lucien Carr, a man whom I trust for being so erratic, because that erraticness leads him to great feats.

I cautiously pad into the cesspool that is Lucien’s bathroom, though it reeks of excessive cleaning to replace the horrid sights with the horrid smells that admittedly aren’t as treacherous as what my eyes are beholding currently, and that’s what he’s going for. To be fair, he didn’t anticipate that he would be receiving a new roommate, considering he brought this about solely on an aspect of his spontaneous character that may or may not have actually been a fruitful decision, for I now have a friend and a place to stay that isn’t the dingy hole called a basement to many but called a home to me, but I was in that trance when I stepped into his apartment long enough for him to hastily repair the wretched state of his bathroom. I wouldn’t mind, because I was thoroughly convinced that I didn’t even _possess_ a mind in that abrupt flow of confusion that almost knocked me into every item scattered across the apartment, but I assume that Lucien was as scared of what was happening as I was, so I presume he’s not to blame for neglecting his bathroom.

Nevertheless, this is the only water closet in the entire flat, and it’s not like I’m asking the neighbors if I can utilize theirs, because that’s both creepy and incompatible with my awkward nature, and if I were to ask them anyway, I could be sure that there would be a feud between us for the remainder of my residency here, which I don’t know the length of, primarily with the impulse that sparked this out of faltering origins, but if we’re writers like we claim to be, then we act solely on that impulse no matter where it guides us, so it might be a while before I escape the leering gaze of the neighbors, though I’ll most likely just stay inside to resolve all potential conflicts antecedent to when they escalate.

However, none of that vendetta business will occur if I simply use Lucien’s bathroom, but how can I do that when there are unkempt toothbrushes practically everywhere? With the agility that old antique store owner says I retain inside this frail body of mine, and that old antique store owner happens to be one of my best friends, so I’ll try just for him. Scooping in a great deal of energy, I leap onto a clean spot upon the alabaster tile where the toothbrushes dare not to enter, and my own toothbrush is nearly catapulted from my hand with the impact, but I ground it at the last moment, my breath jittering from it all.

I ready myself to brush my teeth, but I’m stopped prematurely by a concerned Lucien clad in a flannel and a tank top rushing into the bathroom, swinging around the threshold with most of his body sheathed in the mystery of the blue and white partition, and he jumps from jagged breaths like I do, both ushered into this state by the actions of each other. “What was that, Allen?”

Electing to ignore the question to redirect Lucien’s focus to the atrocity called his water closet, I point towards the general space with convoluted gestures. “Do you see the wreck that is your bathroom?”

Lucien glances down at the mess upon the tile, bewilderment burrowed in the creases of his brow. “Why are there toothbrushes all over the floor?”

Does he seriously not know where these came from? It’s _his_ bathroom, not the bathroom of some straight boy who insists that this place is his because straight boys feel entitled to everything. Shouldn’t he be aware of where the toothbrushes originated from? Are they even his? Does he collect the saliva and bacteria from his family members or forgetful sleepover guests? Will I be next?

Despite every fear undulating inside of my mindset, I roll my eyes to opt for sarcasm. “I’ve been asking myself the same question.”

A sigh sheets Lucien’s esophagus, completely clueless about what this could be, until a burst of sunlight from his eyes contrasts violently with the dark of the night, and he grips an idea. “There’s a cat who’s been visiting my apartment for some reason. I don’t know if it’s a stray or hates sticking to one place, but sometimes it jumps through the window and knocks things over.”

I glimpse the window to whom Lucien is referring, which he’s conveniently left open to prove his point, the curtains waving their elongated fingers with the wind of the New Jersey city streets that is permitted to coast into the apartment because of Lucien’s mistake of opening it and sustaining it like that.

Why has Lucien never thought of calling an animal shelter for the cat? He can’t be sure whether or not the cat is a stray, but if he calls the animal police, then the owners may step forward and revise their parenting skills. On the contrary, Lucien is cold to the public, not in an arrogant way, just in a way that prefers not being sociable when it isn’t necessary, so calling the animal services is off the table, and it’s not like my stuttering personality could call them, either, so I guess the cat is doomed to our hectic writing sessions and peculiar screaming for the sake of one of Lucien’s philosophy lessons.

But the cat is the least of our problems, as the bathroom is irreparably dirty, and the cat isn’t even here right now, so we’ll deal with it when it actually is. For now, I devise a plan to brush my teeth while Lucien watches from the doorway, and that plan is to freeze myself in this position of safety and stretch far enough to spit into the sink, and I succeed with that through Lucien’s amused expression that I wish he would cut out.

Next comes the most difficult part of choosing the sleeping arrangements, as there’s only one queen sized bed, which is adequate for either one or two people, and Lucien may kick me out of it to sleep on the floor.

My companion notices my uncomfortableness about the arrangements, and it’s not so much that I’m worried about sleeping with Lucien, rather that I’m worried about _his_ responses to sleeping with _me_. Should I have toted a sleeping bag to his apartment? Because I don’t have one, and I assume Lucien doesn’t have one, either, but he’s not the type of person to sleep on the floor or force anyone to sleep on the floor. That, or he’s a homoerotic metaphysicist who will willingly invite me into the bed as if he’s a child only seeking a bedtime story from a comforting person.

“Don’t be shy, Allen,” Lucien chuckles, ambling into the side of the bed closest to the unsealed window, which leads me to believe that he wants to be snatched by something other than his mind, and he bends the covers over his plaid boxer cloaked body as he waits for me to do the same, and I eventually consent, though with wearied limbs and trembling apprehension. “Just don’t hog the blanket, okay?” Lucien clarifies, then crashing into the pillow and never returning from his slumber, and I simply cannot express how cherubic he looks in this moment, so to cherish it I curl into the covers and drift away by his side.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: that typical "there's only one bed" trope..,,,, I've sunk to its level
> 
> romanticism: art is an emotional experience centered around an appreciation for aesthetics
> 
> ~Da[n]k[meme]ota


	14. wakey wakey metaphysics and sadness

Drifting away hadn’t been as mundane as I had once suspected, but at least I eventually wound up in the clouds of dreaming at around midnight, when Lucien was already rolled in the bundle named untouchable slumber, because he had no worries about sleeping with a stranger, as his motto is that life is wasted on caution and that sleeping with a stranger will only bring more fervor to his existence and broaden his palette of the opportunities he’s experienced in only twenty-four years, and certainly he’s experienced many more opportunities than someone twice his age because of the way he chooses to live, and sleeping with a stranger is part of it.

However, I am reserved in the indestructible chains of paranoia, and their rules had been whirring through my head all across the slate of night until I finally shoved gags against their mouths bearing thin knives for teeth, and they were silenced in order for me to grab the sailboat of rest and ride it towards the burning horizon, but when I reached that burning horizon, I was snapped awake by the morning sun gliding through the window and stretching my lids open with their intangible tools of dentistry in misplaced locations, and the sailboat has flung itself as far away as it can go, so there’s no returning to it, and I’m adapting to the harsh reality of a messy apartment and a luckier guy than me still sleeping by my side.

And despite Lucien receiving more sleep than I did, he’s still tucked faithfully into the striking sheets of the queen bed, a low purr swimming in his throat, quiet enough to resemble the cat who is now perched on the ledge of his window like it often is (and I’m electing to leave it alone, because who knows what kinds of diseases it carries, even if I sound like a suburban mom?), and in this state of repose, Lucien is more of an angel than he usually is, his golden locks streaming everywhere they shouldn’t be, his ocean eyes only blocked by skin because they’d blind us all if they were to be free, his lips curling each other to shape a ring of invisible smoke from the cigarettes he unhealthily cleaves to, and I could observe him like this forever.

However, Lucien would eventually arrive in the apartment after a pleasant ride on the sailboat of sleep, and he would be questioning why I’ve been watching him like a stalker, questioning why he slept with this stranger, questioning if he really should live this widely, and I don’t want for him to relinquish any of that spontaneity, so I tug my vision away from him and into the door left wholly ajar from when Lucien volleyed through it at the noise I formed while dodging the hell that is his bathroom floor, and sluggishly I slide my legs across the sheets towards the hardwood panels and the chill that they have hosted since the morning delivered its sensual flavors expressly to them. Endeavoring to produce as little sound as is possible, my toes graze the floor, gradually pooled with the rest of my body, prepared to exit the room and leave Lucien to his rest.

This decision allots me time to explore the remainder of the apartment, as I was either fixed on the confusion of my first impression or being whisked away into activities that I couldn’t deny due to Lucien’s inconsolable avidity for them, but now that the morning draft has swept through the area and obliterated the residents’ whims to remain here, I am alone to map the space without interruptions from the erratic writer whose field of expertise is utterly unknown to me, just as this apartment is, but I’m praying that by the time I’ve finished charting this house, only one of those will be a secret to me, but if I discover both, then that’s a welcomed bonus, too.

Lucien has made no effort to clean his house, even in the time where I was endeavoring to do something as elementary as brush my fucking teeth stained dirty from Lucien’s terrible spaghetti rings, but I suppose that provides me with more items to investigate, though these items probably won’t ever move locations, as Lucien is a man who claims that tidying up an area is another example of how humans are artificial in order to impress other humans as if their opinion of something as transparent as the state of an apartment is critical, as if it will motivate Lucien to alter it because he actually gives a single shit about what other people think.

I’m now feeling inundated by the plethora of items strewn about the apartment like the fragmented remains of dirt after a bullet smites the ground in which it sat, a warzone devastated by its own purpose, and I’m not sure how to begin to sort through it all. I am cognizant that Lucien has collected these objects throughout his life and has never bothered to separate them into the trash or to charity or to a protected box for the special ones, but he obviously would refuse the idea of my help with finally doing so, and one day he will find himself locked inside of a room with a pile of clutter restricting any path outside, so even if I’m ruining his pretentious doctrine about leaving things undisturbed, I will clear things out so that he will never ruin _himself_ with a monster of trash knocking at his door with the key in its greasy fingers.

There’s so much to do, which is already difficult enough, but I also have to organize his possessions subtly so that he doesn’t confront me about why I have wrecked the natural order of things, embarking on a tangent of how every grain of sand is on the beach through the cycle of life and is sometimes carried in the shoes of visitors to other destinations, and I’m not ready for that spiel when it’s so early in the morning and I haven’t doused myself in bitter coffee and the clarity of thought.

Perhaps arranging the smaller items into piles in hidden places is a productive way to go, so that’s what I do, careful to hush my work so that Lucien won’t catch me rattling the cycle of life in a place as paltry as his apartment that never affects that cycle because Lucien rarely ventures outside except for work at the library. My goal is swimming along adeptly, and it’s like a routine now — locate a curio, locate a pile, and place the curio in that pile. Nothing can stop me in this rhythm, and it’s not so arduous anymore, except for when I’m halted by the only one with the power to do so.

“Oh, hey, Allen,” Lucien greets, like hospital paddles to the chest, jolting me back to reality. “You’re up early.” He stares at me for a prolonged moment, then shrugging and pivoting away. “But as they say, early bird catches the existential despair of writing, though by the looks of it, you’re merely scouring my apartment for information about this mysterious man named Lucien Carr.”

“Well it’s not like you gave me anything.”

“Fair enough.” Lucien wrangles the milk carton from his refrigerator and pushes the door back into place afterwards, gesturing towards me with it. “So what have you found?”

I haven’t lingered too long on anything, because Lucien has nothing of note that’s congealed into one extravaganza in the living room of his apartment, rather items dispersed around the area with tiny bits of meaning inside of them instead of a _grand_ mass of meaning, and there most exciting item I’ve seen is an intricate puff of spider webs in the corner, which Lucien didn’t even spin himself, which he might not have noticed at all, which may have distracted him while writing if he did notice it. I’m not saying that Lucien’s apartment is boring, just that it’s so complex that everything cancels each other out and leaves the viewer frustrated because only Lucien understands this place, but locations such as these cannot be deftly explained to others. They’re felt deep within, with emotional ties whom I do not possess and most likely never will, and sifting through the heaps of objects stored in this apartment may be entertaining, but it is not fruitful in the slightest. However, I am content with the notion that I could possibly understand it one day, once this apartment belongs to me as much as it belongs to Lucien, but that day is far down the road, so I must admit that I have found nothing special.

“I’ve found that you hoard lots of items,” I allow as an excuse to appease my friend who won’t settle for anything less than a halfhearted reply, exclaiming that there is always something that catches a human’s eye, even if it is not significant; it just needs to be more prominent than the other objects around it, and though my discovery is not a corporeal phenomenon, Lucien will settle for it.

Lucien’s focus is bent towards pouring a glass of milk that he’s selected from the cabinet, demeanor too calm for it to be natural. “And because of that, you straightened some of them out, yes?”

Whether he guessed this by my nature or noticed it immediately, I’m not sure, but it’s alarming nonetheless, and a panicked swallow crawls languidly down my throat to try and escape, but I’m still caught in the crossfire of my own trials.

When Lucien glances up and spies my nervousness, all he does is laugh. “For Christ’s sake, Allen. Don’t be so frightened.” Bolting the lid of the milk jug on its prior position, he restores the carton to the refrigerator and continues to ridicule me. “If you’re scared that I would be upset with you for messing with the natural order, then you’re wrong, because every force in the world is natural.”

I only stand here, shocked by Lucien catching me in the act of ordering his items and by his claim that what I did was somehow natural in his perception, and he observes this, my bewilderment, and elaborates.

“Every event is bound to occur, because that is what both history and the future dictate. If you travel to the past and affect something, then nothing would’ve changed, because the past carries on with the actions you imposed in there, as that was part of its history. Time is always moving, and it never stops or revises itself for the activities of a member in this constant flow, because those activities are a planned segment in the line, therefore rendering all plots natural and part of the life cycle.” Lucien tips a waterfall of milk into his throat, some of which tumbles down his shirt, but he ignores it to speak against the liquid. “So really, Allen, you did nothing wrong. This was bound to transpire.”

I’m silent, which doesn’t really irk Lucien, as he’s now furiously pulling off his milky shirt and pounding it against the ground to add another piece of clutter to his apartment, and without so much as a word, he stalks to the grimy bathroom for a shower.

I toss a brief peek at the contents of Lucien’s crowded flat and rearrange only one item to the pile closest to me, somewhat satisfied by my companion’s permission to do whatever the hell I please with his possessions, and I’m all of the sudden back to my duty, though this time I’m not so worried about it anymore.

I suppose Lucien can really help people like that, soothe their guilts, and for that I’m extremely grateful.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: allen is such a mom omg
> 
> sensualism: sensual experiences are the core part of cognition
> 
> ~Dankota


	15. you used to call me on my hell phone

While Lucien was sleeping earlier this morning, that was my first opportunity to do as I please in his apartment, and that was to explore the place and tidy it up once I realized how fucking atrocious it is, with wrappers and manuscripts and pens all over the floor until you can no longer spy the white carpet from beneath the striking abundance of those sundry items, and now that Lucien is in the shower after wordlessly spilling milk all over his shirt, I have snagged another opportunity to perhaps do something different before, because in all honesty there’s no saving this mess of an apartment.

I remember that I haven’t talked to Edie in a while, and I have some things to brag about, except those things that will enable me to boast are also things that Edie is far too unaware of, meaning that she most likely assumes I’m dead in an alley somewhere, because when an asocial person finally ventures outside of the house after staying locked up in a dingy basement for practically their entire life after escaping the hell that is college, horrid events are bound to occur, at least in Edie’s perception, so she must be terribly worried about my wellbeing and just hasn’t called yet, as I’m never on my cell phone to answer anyway, and that indelible fact about me has wiped her memory of calling as a possibility in the completest of senses, so I’ll call _her_ instead and soothe her worries, for I’d rather not have the police on my tail and accuse me of partaking in a flagrant homosexual affair with the people who are known to be possibly the _most_ homosexual, which are unanimously metaphysical writers.

I don’t have enough money to be caught up in a police investigation, and neither does Lucien, but none of that is relevant when I’m not forcing him to help me with anything, and also it isn’t my job to inform Edie of my whereabouts anyway. I’m an adult, even if I don’t act like it, and I’ve just embarked on a new journey into the strange corners of life that gather dust from the minorities called poets, their brain fog and their salvaged curios, their creations only limited by how far their hand can extend into the dark matter of their mind, and this is a troubling life, but it’s an interesting one, and I’d much rather witness it with all of its flaws than stay pent up in a basement who spikes the air with an icy chill whenever it pleases, but I don’t suppose that excuses my lack of communication with the woman who has fed me and housed me since I graduated from college, and it’s my duty to call her.

Sometimes I think that I’ve forgotten how to operate a cell phone, despite storing it in my pocket and carrying it around with me wherever I go as a sort of anchor that’s always there, and to remove it would throw off my balance and produce an empty sort of feeling in my step and in my mind as it races to try and figure out what’s wrong, but today I am mostly prepared to dial Edie’s number and call her without any issues from my isolated personality.

Even though I barely utilize my cell phone, I have still memorized the numbers of both Jack and Edie as an emergency resource for when the device in my pocket is actually fruitful, so I punch in the string of digits and wait for Edie to pick up, not taking into account the fact that it’s nine o’clock in the morning and she’s one to sleep until two o’clock in the afternoon as if she has nothing to do with her life when really that should be me. Frankly, I don’t give a shit, because if she’s as on edge as she would need to be for this call to be appropriate, she’s either a light sleeper in order to catch my call when it comes, or she never received any rest at all through her harrowing night of fretfulness.

The ringing is the only sound to guide me through the seconds and tens of seconds and eventually twenty seconds, until the speaker crackles.

“Hey, Edie. It’s Allen,” I greet sheepishly, my hands shaking in the subtlest of manners, and that’s how I maintain it, even if no one is here to see how nervous I am to be talking to a woman who will surely be reprimanding me pretty damn soon.

There’s an abbreviated pause at the other end of the line, marked by astonishment that I’m actually alive and not in the dirt of some stranger’s back lawn. “Allen! Where the hell have you been? Jack and I have been so concerned!”

Yep, she’s angry with me, which should have been expected. Edie Parker is a person sensitive to abrupt vagaries mixed into her life without a warning beforehand, and I’ve known this for a while, but I was praying foolishly that she would not scold me for being this spontaneous when that’s so unlike me. Spontaneity looks fantastic on Lucien but not so much on my own body, and that’s okay, because I can watch him in the limelight from afar without risking my unsuitable nature, but I enacted a careless mistake in not explaining my plans to Edie and therefore ignored a sole step in the art of coasting on my whims, and that’s why spontaneity is unfitting for me.

And now I’m fucked, but Edie isn’t going to hang up when she is devoid of an explanation as to why I abandoned her and Jack when I never even leave the house, and I’d hate to lie to her, but the truth is so damn infuriating to someone like her, a pragmatic woman who needs to know everything about her charges, and I never really view that as controlling, just mindful of circumstances that could easily convert to unfortunate as quickly as they could convert to pleasant, so there’s nothing to stop me from complying from a moral standpoint, and I might as well just extract the truth from myself to help her out, as she’s done so much for me since college.

This still doesn’t solve my issue of being anxious out of my mind, with a screw twisting the corner of my lips as a natural reflex to a phobia, but I shove the words out anyway; it’s the least I can do. “Um, I moved in with a guy.”

A sigh wobbles through the speaker, replacing the relief I thought was next with disappointment in choices that I am allowed to make as an adult. “Is it that Lucien Carr character?”

I’m sure Lucien would appreciate being labeled as a character, being a writer and all, but I’m not sure he would be grateful that Edie is referring to him in such a harsh tone, as if he’s done something apart from offering me a mundane invitation which I could’ve refused, but I didn’t, and then I neglected to tell Edie of the plan, so really it’s my fault instead of his.

“Um…” I hesitate for a moment, because on one hand, I don’t want her to think poorly of Lucien because he ensnared me in his beauty and caused this mishap, but on the other hand, I want to share that beauty with her and Jack when they meet him like they requested when I first encountered him in the library on the hunt for a book about the horrors of rhyme and meter and won the attention of a brilliant man, but I already concluded that I must tell the truth, so with my voice as brittle as the cascading leaves waving their crumbling fingers by the window, I answer, “yeah, it’s that Lucien Carr character.”

Fueled even more by the knowledge of the mysterious man’s identity whom she claims must’ve worked some magic on me to steal my presence from her, her voice glides into the highest level of motherly discouragement ever before witnessed by humankind, and she injects it into her words as well, which really doesn’t aid my security. “Why didn’t you tell us about this, Allen?”

I really have nothing to say for myself, as I’ve already repented in my mind, but Edie doesn’t understand that I’ve endured enough by my own guilty hands, so she requires something more than that, and I give the best that I can. “Life was moving too quickly, I guess.”

“Well it wasn’t moving so quickly that it stopped you from packing up your possessions, so while you were at the house, why didn’t you contemplate dropping off a note on the kitchen counter or something?”

Defeated by the muffling of a logic that I cannot clearly explain to the woman who requires it the most, I confess, “I’m sorry, Edie.”

“Who are you talking to?” Lucien interjects, and my neck expeditiously swivels around to glimpse his figure, partially damp from the shower with the rest of it shrouded in sky blue boy shorts and a white t-shirt whose only accent is “carpe diem” scripted in block letters across his chest, a phrase that is dooming me in this precise moment.

“Allen?” Edie calls, the speaker mitigated by its position in the folds of my clothing and offering me a chance to pretend as though I can’t hear the woman who only wants to help me but the woman who is admittedly unnecessary in this situation that I just want to retreat from.

I don’t answer either of my friends, and Lucien knows that I never will, so he instead strides over to me and arrests the phone from my fragile hands, resuming the conversation that I could never finish because I’m too weak to fabricate a plausible reason as to why I vanished from the basement all of the sudden and have already moved in with someone.

“Hello, ma’am,” Lucien acknowledges, chipper and adorably boyish in the smile that lacquers his freshly shaven face. He waits for a few moments to collect Edie’s response, then answering, “Yes, this is Lucien Carr, and yes, everything is fine. There’s no need to worry, is there, Allen?”

“No, everything is fine!” I shout, caught off guard, and Lucien grins, focusing back on my fretful companion who still has no idea where the hell I am, and he utters a quick goodbye before hanging up.

I’m free from the anxiety of replying to Edie’s impossible questions, so I discharge a shuddering breath, Lucien studying me as he flashes his apprehension in the slightest of manners, but he deems that countenance ugly upon his body who is always magnificent, even if he can’t decrypt it himself, and moves on from the subject.

“Nice woman,” Lucien comments, padding through the kitchen for a cup of coffee to speed up my process of settling down after that harrowing adventure, which is very generous of him, but I’m not certain that I can digest any liquid at the current moment, though it’s not like I can deny such an altruistic act, so I’ll only allow the coffee to run lukewarm across the track of climate and hope that Lucien doesn’t notice my disfavor towards it.

There will be a lot of that in our relationship, for I do not wish to harm Lucien with the brutal truth of my spirit, and although he is a strong man, much stronger than I am or could ever be, even the strong people crumble eventually. They know crumbling all too well, and that is why they have become strong enough to fortify themselves against it, but no one is indestructible, especially not the obvious wreck of a writer who Lucien portrays to the point where his pretentiousness is no longer a veneer. He thinks his pretentiousness is justified because he’s a writer. He may be correct, though, because the public adores falsified sophistication, and that’s exactly what he’s loaded with, but I’m now recognizing that this is him in his entirety, and he’s more fucked up than I had thought, so that’s why he seems especially strong; he’s been crumbling for a while now, and maybe I’m not the one who needs saving. I’m not the one who needs coffee to recovery; it’s him. I’m not the one who should be admiring his spontaneity; he is spontaneous to increase his risk of death.

And really...who can blame a writer for that?

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I've noticed that I go on these tangents at the ends of my chapters in all of my works why do I do this
> 
> hylozoism: the theory that some or all material objects possess life
> 
> ~Darkota


	16. lowercase is my aesthetic

With all of this metaphysical bullshit Lucien has shoved me into with the promise that it will be an adventure, a product of his somehow consistent spontaneity, even if that consistent spontaneity has landed us in that terrible situation with Edie on the phone, I haven’t snagged the opportunity to write an article for my blog, and when I checked my email inbox this morning, it was bursting with comments asking if I am okay or if I’ve abandoned my blog or if this upcoming article is longer than the other ones and therefore requires more time to complete, none of which are true but all of which are increasingly difficult to express, but there are enough comments in my inbox that I can pretend like I didn’t see them.

I’d much rather wallow in the beauty that Lucien has brought about by simply meeting me in the library that one day not too long ago, as articles are material concepts in a span of arbitrary means and never change while I’m off living the extraordinary existence that all humans should experience, so if they’re that boring, why are my readers ostensibly purified by them, and why do they continue to demand more? Are they insecure in their intelligence? Because I can’t fix that by writing some shitty articles that I half-assed just to get them over with.

Lucien is the type of man to ship you inspiration across the fucking Atlantic Ocean, yet since I’ve been with him, I have nothing to write about, and I’m not sure if I can find anything. Lucien is going to the library for work today, so I can follow him and peruse the aisles for something interesting to appease my thirsting readers who really know nothing about me except for the fact that I must be a highly prestigious scholar when I’m really just a hermit who has just escaped their basement of ten months. The library stores masses of interesting topics for articles, but will I want to write them? Is the case that I have no inspiration, or is the case that Lucien has devoured all of my motivation to draft a paper out of whatever inspiration I may possess? I won’t ever know, because I’m going to force myself to write this goddamn article no matter what, so I need to plan my trip to the library.

“Lucien?” I call into the kitchen from my cozy position on the cobalt chair, scrolling through the abundance of comments just to occupy my fingers and assay just how many there are in a general sense, and there sure are a lot, meaning that I must write this article or suffer a glitch in my email because of the spate of comments flooding in upon the wave of peevishness.

“Yes, Allen?” Lucien replies, unrooting himself from a chair at the kitchen table and from his activity of staring at the wall like it has a purpose undiscovered by man while he solemnly sips his coffee, to instead assist me in my existential awakenings.

“Can I go with you to the library today?”

A lamp called excitement sprouts into a display of magnificent beams upon Lucien’s complexion, and he shakes his finger in an odd sort of gesture as he labors to recall something. “Do you need a book for an article on your blog?”

“Yeah. I haven’t written one in a few days with all of this hectic roommate business.”

That’s not to say that I haven’t enjoyed being tangled up in this hectic roommate business, just that it’s supplanted my articles with more and more impulsivity piled atop itself as both the heap and our smiles grow, and that impulsivity is not only the replacement for my articles, but it’s the reason why my articles are currently nonexistent, and now my readers are roaring at me to stop being such a lazy bum and actually delve into the world of intellectual merit when I’d rather enjoy amorphous performances of art like Lucien provides me with, and articles won’t ever come close to that, yet I can’t desert this blog of mine to focus solely on that art, because if this whole relationship between Lucien and me goes to hell, I need a backup source that will fuel my sense of worth in the harsh, unforgiving world.

I’m always saying that this relationship is doomed and that it has been doomed from its genesis, but it’s true. There is always a point where a falling out is closer than a falling in. There is always a point where someone’s spontaneity becomes their recklessness and their clumsy gambling. There is always a point where you want to leave but still care enough about the other person to spare their feelings and endure the strife. There is always a point where you decide to fuck it and go, because the wreck that you’ve been doting on has either wasted your affection or never elucidated the fact that they needed you more than you needed them and has spun you into a lie, a psychologically devastating lie from which no human can recover, and as much as I’d hate to see my relationship with Lucien reach those points, it’s as inevitable as he says death is, and I will eventually need that backup source, so I also need to build it up with a new article.

Lucien perches on the arm of my chair, guarding his coffee mug with both of his hands like a psychologist and a mother at the same time, and his words are typical of the two. “I think it’s great that you’re doing this, getting yourself out there.”

Well it’s certainly the only way I’ll do it, and Edie and Jack understood that, too, so they never really bothered me about my blog except to ask in a manner of small talk how its statistics are polling, how many reads I’ve received on my newest article, what topic I’ve been invested in recently, if any comments stood out to me, only the mundane questions reserved for those mandatory dinners Edie hosts every month, because Jack and Edie know that I don’t give a shit about fulfilling their politeness rituals, but they also know that I’m passionate about writing, so that’s the only way they can sneak into my life and sneak me into the conversation.

“This article writing business started on a whim, much like we did—” I pause upon detecting a shadow of pain sauntering over Lucien’s face, unexpected from him yet as vivid as his ocean blue eyes now watering with their own contents, and I assume that I know why he’s been damaged by my comment. Lucien thinks that this relationship is stable enough for us to perpetuate across a large terrain of time, but that’s not a veritable hypothesis. As much as he would like to believe otherwise, we _did_ start on a whim. We had barely interacted with each other before he was pleading for me to move into his apartment with him, which was a step up from my dreary basement, I must admit, but this plan is flimsy and feeble and will not work out in the end, though we sure can pray that it will. We’re skilled enough at ignoring the truth anyway.

But what kind of monster would end the relationship prematurely by crushing any dreams of its success? I don’t aim to hurt Lucien, only remind him of what is sure to transpire, but I can’t even say _that_. I can only say that I’m sorry, which is terribly difficult when there are thousands of warriors screaming at me to allow them passage through the barrier I’ve constructed to defend us against them, and the wall is deteriorating, so I force the words through.

“I’m sorry, Lucien. I didn’t mean it like that,” I apologize frantically, expelling the words before Lucien can interrupt with something to ruin me, something that is only birthed out of the misconceptions of my incompleted statement, but in these nearing seconds I realize that I don’t need to desert my statement to be struck by a sentence harsher than anything I’ve witnessed from him before.

“We both know you did.” Lucien’s gaze drills into me, penetrates my security, breaks away to slide off of the arm of the chair as if dismissing my comment entirely. “But you’re right nonetheless. I was just hoping to revel in this bliss for a little while longer, so thanks for dampening the mood.”

It is now clear that both Lucien and I wish for this relationship to prevail, perhaps in equal amounts, but the dividing idea is that Lucien is willing to neglect every piece of evidence that yells at him with contradictions to his destructive whims, and there isn’t even a single piece of _opposing_ evidence to suggest that it _could_ prevail. He’s riding this wave solely because the prospect of a happy relationship is a conceivable idea, not because it’s somewhere that he can see, and that’s where he’ll be destroyed.

“Lucien, you _must_ comprehend that every relationship is fragile.” I scramble from the chair, almost tripping over the piles of items Lucien has amassed in his apartment, and I barely reach my companion just before he slips into his bedroom, halting to gather my breath now that I’ve caught him, though he’s obviously annoyed and only desires to be free.

With a tone as icy as the November climate outside, ruffling his hair as it sloshes through the window, Lucien spits, “Just get ready for the library, Allen.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: why the hell they fighting tho
> 
> (((stick with the fucking outline, dakota)))
> 
> homocentrism: regarding humans to be the core of the universe and only considering humans
> 
> ~Dakotoe


	17. the sexual tension increases

There are certain emotions that Lucien has decided look ugly on him, and anger is one of them, so he’s replaced that with conviviality in the soles of his feet as he bounces across the sidewalk, in the swinging of his arms back and forth by his side, in the smile plastered upon his face to make it seem as though that anger isn’t still present deep inside of him, except now it’s not so much anger, rather a hollow confliction between the two opinions consuming his brain, one side knowing that I’m correct and the other side fighting that acceptance to live forever in its childish reverie.

I have chosen not to talk or think about that minor argument in the house right before we ventured outside of it towards the library, because I would prefer to save the arguments for later, when we’re crumbling like I know we will be eventually, This is the state of a relationship where everything looks beautiful to the couple, where they’ve just met and are whirled into each other, into their magnificence, into their quirks, into their knowledge that they share with the opposite party to allure them, and each part of this state is what people would love to remain in, but unfortunately that is not how relationships operate. However, that’s where Lucien and I are, and that bliss shouldn’t be squandered on worrying about what will happen when we are no longer in this state, so this trip to the library is both a refresher from the prior argument and a reminder that life is exceptionally beautiful just as the other person is.

Yes, this isn’t a library trip born from the desire to take a break from life in the apartment, because Lucien actually has a job here, a job from which he’ll probably be fired if he abstains from working to instead relish the metaphysical terrors of writing alongside me, and quite frankly we’re in need of money, so to be fired from our only source of income would not be so pleasant, and I’m not sure how we would survive after that, which means I shouldn’t pressure Lucien into staying in that apartment even if we _didn’t_ have that argument earlier, and this library excursion is ostensibly essential to our survival.

It’s not like he actually has to work diligently, though, because he can pretend like I’m a regular library patron and not his familiar roommate, and Lucien’s manager won’t give a shit as long as he doesn’t find out, and even then we have an excuse of my urge to write an article, and I’m sure his manager will appreciate my intellectual merit, as I must have enough of it to visit the fucking library in order to expand on that intellectual merit through a dreary article that only impresses people who have no knowledge of their own and feed off of me, acting as though they’ve received it after reading my work when in reality they’ll always be the same dimwitted fools that they have always been, because intelligence is derived by experiencing the world, not by reading about it through a lens of artificiality, and writers are to blame for this, I suppose, because they experience this world so vividly that they write about it vividly, yet it’s not the same as the real life, but regular people assume it is, so that’s all for which they settle, and they’ve therefore lured themselves into a painful existence of mediocrity that they aren’t aware of and will continue to dwell in until they experience the world vividly through their own vision, but that’s highly unlikely for people who have already delved into reading articles like it’s the heroin that these self-titled scholars can all afford from the comfort of their sitting rooms as they have no idea that I’m suffering through hell, and that’s okay, because they wouldn’t really understand anyway, but Lucien does, and that’s why I’m glad that if I’m to be snared in a flimsy relationship, it’s with him.

And he looks so amazing in his trance upon the sidewalk, spritzed by splendor in the heavenly dew commonly found upon grass freshened in the morning air. I never wish to disturb him, but we’re at the library now, and the slamming and the creaking of the doors will surely rattle him, as well as the subtle chattering of the library patrons who really don’t want to be here but are forced into it by their parents who have concluded that perpetual studying is the way to go, and even through this sound, Lucien is as cherubic as always, a blessing to us all.

All of us except for his manager, who emerges from the back room with a malevolent expression already throttling his reddening face, but Lucien checks the clock suspended upon the wall above the desk and, before his manager can complain about his lateness, announces, “I am one minute early, sir, and your institutional punishments will not thrive amidst the barriers of my well deserved impunity!”

It never ceases to amaze me how Lucien is always able to coordinate his time (excluding that one anecdote where he was stricken by the sleep deprivation induced by his constant writing sessions), how he can just narrowly escape the glare of his manager for being late, because he had only _one_ minute to spare. It’s fantastic, and it’s stunningly typical of him as well.

Lucien glides towards the counter after that, protected by the astonishment freezing his manager’s body, and he ushers me to him with no protest from the now paralyzed man, because honestly Lucien has done much worse than invite a guest behind the desk.

It is only when a library patron approaches the manager that he unfreezes himself from his petrified state and therefore leaves us to do whatever we please as long as we don’t disrupt anyone, because the manager will not be spying on us with his circular glasses and rampant spite, though that’s never stopped Lucien any other time, as he’s a free spirit, someone I wish that I could be, but I’m not that person, so I only admire those who are from the sidelines.

He’s pragmatic, too, with that determined expression coating the entirety of his visage and shoving itself over for no other emotion, only set on achieving the goal of selecting the correct numbers out of his catalogue to sort through the books and the labels and the confusion of being a nascent librarian, and it’s difficult work, work that Lucien despises doing, so I inform him of my plan so that he can pretend to be helping a regular library patron while he basically just hangs out with his friend.

“I’m looking for a book.” Lucien says nothing, only carries on with his convoluted job of sorting things that won’t matter by tomorrow, so I repeat myself, “I said I’m looking for a book.”

Lucien finally glances up, groaning as if I’m a child who cannot grasp any concept that he’s trying to teach me. “Yes, I know what you said, but you never specified the title of the book, and this is a place full of them, so how am I supposed to find it for you when all you’ve given me is a general description of what everything else is in this godforsaken library?”

“There’s isn’t a title,” I confess, more damaged than I should be for this situation. “I’m out of ideas for an article, and I was hoping that the rows of books could help me find something about whom to write. I thought you would enjoy a break from the monotony of...cataloguing books.”

Lucien is adamant for a moment, but then he rises from his position by the counter to aid me in my search for a book to use to research topics for an article, his manager taking no note of this, as he’s occupied by a library patron and by the misconception that Lucien is only doing his job earnestly, which is less than true, and even if the manager is cognizant of this, he has had enough of Lucien’s antics or rather dealing with them, so it’s better just to leave him to his scheming.

Lucien’s fingers tumble over the fluctuations in the spines of the books furnishing the grandiose shelves stacked one by one in meticulous intervals of seven feet, and it’s almost like a child in the way that the motion never ceases except to recoil slightly when there’s a wider book next to a smaller one, as if he’s been harmed by it. He imbibes the fragrance of fresh books, of old books, of books mistreated in a short period of time, of books treated well in a prolonged period of time, of books and their majesties, of books and their holiness, of books. And he’s happy in this place, in the familiar machinery of intellect, and it would be pleasant to see him here forever, but he’s gone all of the sudden, hidden by the towers of knowledge without so much as a sound besides the elation brimming in his extraordinary brain.

“Lucien?” I call, a tad louder than I should be speaking in a library, and I receive some infuriated hushes from the other library patrons from locations that I can’t even see from behind the shelf. Alas, no one unsheathes themselves from the aisles to greet me again, certainly not Lucien, and I begin to worry about where he has gone, if this is a sick prank or if he’s abandoned me to return to his work because I was too damn annoying for him to get anything done, but I have no idea where I should stop, and I don’t ever, so peeling from the current aisle, I move on to the next one to find it as empty as the last.

Whipping around in a frenzy that is turning to hopelessness, I once again recognize that the aisle is vacant, and with the spaces in the shelves all full with books, it seems as though I am trapped within its walls, suffocating in my own paranoia and exaggeration.

I’m just about to give up on scouring the aisles for Lucien to instead return to the desk where he’ll be at some point, when I spin around to face the person for whom I’ve been scavenging rapidly, so close that our breath strains longingly for each other. His ocean blue eyes are tipped towards me, teasing every fiber of strength that I may have retained, his mouth cracked just enough to capture a straw within it, and he’s staring intently at me. That’s all he does — just _stares_ , sometimes trailing down to my lips then flicking his attention back up to my eyes, where panic dashes around madly in an attempt to sort through what the hell is happening and why it’s so alluring in this state of pandemonium.

Lucien nears me in a gradual track, seemingly with the intention of a kiss, but, perpetuating his stare, he instead procures a book from behind his back and slants it towards me. “I found something you might like.”

And with that, he’s strolling down the aisle again, the fucking tease that he is, and _goddamn_ do I need to catch my breath.

 


	18. breathe on my neck

I don’t know if I should be wary around Lucien now, as he almost fucking kissed me in a library where anyone could see, and though he didn’t, the intentions were clear in his eyes, but they may have been overpowered by the effects of tantalization, and Lucien is the biggest tease I know, so that’s more plausible than his desire to kiss me.

But beside the teasing aspect of his character, anyone could see the contemplation wading in those ocean eyes of his, just waiting to expel its true goals onto me yet reserving itself still, because it was scared of how I would react, as I was already plagued by nervousness in that moment, having been pinned to the shelf by a boy who wouldn’t stop staring at me. Does Lucien actually like me, or is it a ploy to support his own ambitions?

He was originally on the search for a book to use in an article while I was on the search for _him_ , and then he appeared in my sight all of the sudden with a kiss the salient priority on his mind, yet he had picked a book also and gave it to me only when we were an inch apart so as to fool me, so does he just like to be extravagant, or did he panic at the last second and really did want to kiss me?

I can’t decide yet, because after he transported the research material to me, he was sashaying through the aisles to return to his work of cataloguing items at the desk as if nothing had ever happened between us at all, as if he were solely a librarian to me and nothing more, because his job of helping me find a book had been completed, and that was all that he needed to do for a library patron. I’m thankful for his assistance, though, for I now have a suitable topic for an article, and I will be out of my funk by this afternoon.

Lucien had selected a book on the history and the aftermath of capitalism in countries other than our own and partially in America as well, but we’re still frozen inside of that economic system, so we can’t really speak from the beginning to the end for ourselves, but history repeats itself, so there’s bound to be striking parallels even in countries halfway across the world.

Lucien’s choice surprised me, because though he is very vocal about his opinions, he elects to stay on the side of philosophy where things are amorphous, never dipping his toes into the hellfire that is economics, because those parts of human civilization are terrifying and arbitrary and convoluted and totally disparate from Lucien’s spirited disposition, but he may just be testing what I know about capitalism and how my views of it manifest in the article.

I could receive lots of backlash for this, losing some readers along the way if their conservatism is more important to them than the artificial knowledge they crave and find in my articles, but writing is all about backlash. My drafting process is logging powerful words into my computer and hoping they’ll ignite a riot among the insufferable bigots, but I never forget that my words are my own, and I can do whatever the hell I want with them. They don’t have to be grandiose displays of pretentiousness, nor docile entries with tiny blips of opinions dispersed in there so that I’m not slammed by a suburban dad for being one of these stupid youngins. I am free in writing, so if I lose readers because of this, then that’s perfect for me, as I receive enough comments anyway, conservatives are a waste of my time, and I require respect for my words on a terrain that is my own and can be abandoned if one doesn’t enjoy what I have to say.

I’m going to be brutally honest with my article, as any writer should. Being behind a computer screen offers me a chance to say whatever the hell I please without worrying about a fistfight with people who can’t fucking accept it and will never grow past foolish children whose cynicism, even with its general center of humanity, is still only pointed to _one_ human. I can’t be bothered by people who think that their crusty conventionalism is relevant on a slate that is purely my own, and I will state my opinion without glorifying theirs for being so ludicrous by simply existing in my temple, and though that sounds narcissistic, I’ve had enough people chastise me for vocalizing what I think is morally right, and now it’s my time to shine upon my platform of thousands of people whose silence is mandatory in this theater. It’s time to be free from my restraints of anxiety, and it’s time to say something.

From what I can see, we are perpetually molested by capitalism, by an imposed sense of inferiority to insubstantial paper with the heads of the ancient perpetrators marked upon them to pound the notion that they are important into our mechanistic minds. There is enough for us, but alas we have not earned it through painful labor and strenuous hours, but is that not what our riots signify? Is that not the impoverished dwelling in the slums of avenues with higher prospects than filth of the lesser side? Is that not the sickness we endure and the vaccines that hide from us like we’re the monsters for desiring justice in a world where it was proven long ago that all men are created equal, for simply searching for that statement’s verity?

And yet beside the criticism we cry out! We cry out joyously at times and weep against the rain stricken parchment of our signs protesting iniquity where it is abundant. We seek justice but are barred and gagged by institution and form shoved upon us by the dictators of this system, by the demagogues with nothing more than an audience above the city streets slickened by the tears of the poor who are crushed below the upper class’ feet, but we are told that we are forever at the bottom because that is how it is supposed to be, suspended below the dirt, below the views of common people who couldn’t care less about our strife, below the views of businessmen and corporations who think that we are nothing because our lives revolve around circumstances that happen to be unfortunate, as if their lives do not do the same, as if their circumstances are nonexistent just because their circumstances are bearing.

We of the diminutive will always be plagued by the touch of capitalism who claims that they need us yet snares every chance to call us ugly when their opinions are unlatched from the ties of those who believe in a fairer government, those who will condemn businessmen for trampling the people extending their grimy fingers towards the heaven who serves as their only deliverance, who offers angels in places where they are null, who neglects the pessimism and the fraudulence of capitalists to instead bestow paradise upon those who have struggled in the tightest bonds of their enemy, and that is when they are free. That is when _we_ are free, all these fallen soldiers of the forgotten dime, all these protesters who slapped capitalism and caught the ricochet of their bullets against the industrial metal from the factories that keep us, all these paupers who never meant a thing to the upper class but meant something to themselves, all these citizens who never gave up the fight.

I have known poverty many times before, though I disguised it in a way that would praise the altruism of others instead of reveal the true reason for their altruism, like I have done with Jack and Edie and their permission for my residence in their basement. I was struggling financially after breaking my ties with my horrific family who only cared about my fame, but Jack and Edie were my well adjusted friends, so they allowed me to stay with them until I could get back on my feet, and the rest may have been pity, but they granted me a permanent stay so that I could pursue my article writing business, which now has me heated up beyond compare.

Poverty is a tricky thing, as most people have no interest in helping someone and would rather kick dirt in their face than simply leave them alone and try to soothe their guilty conscience as if their morals are more essential than one’s life, and Lucien is now at my side in an attempt to help me explain this to the world without sounding like a despot whose only goal is to crush capitalism, though I’m not sure that would really be a problem after everything capitalism has put me through, but when Lucien is pragmatic, that means something is extremely crucial to him.

“Add a comma there,” he suggests, one hand gripping the back of my seat and the other hand pointing to a part of a sentence on the computer screen that I had missed.

Sometimes I neglect to add punctuation where it is needed, because quite frankly the words are too small for my aging eyes who have probably been ruined by years of staring at this same computer screen in an endeavor to preserve the youth that is flying from me as an effect of that ordeal, the paradox of the digitally published intellectual, but Lucien’s eyes are brilliant and electrifying and able to detect mistakes where I cannot, so perhaps I should employ him to edit all of my articles, but that probably would end in a disaster, as I am wary of sharing my writing with people I know in real life, because any one of them could approach me at some point and ask what I meant by something and not once realize that maybe I am suffering in a fucking basement that smells like dirty water and bits of myself, bits claiming that this is a hell I created just because it resembles me.

So, yeah — Lucien isn’t granted access to my articles, but I’m thankful for that extra comma at least.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I don't even know how I feel about capitalism and socialism what am I doing here
> 
> idealism: that knowledge is founded on ideas
> 
> ~Dakotato


	19. settle down, rodeo clown

At first, I had been nervous for the flood of comments to my inbox that always comes after I publish an article, and this recent one had been pretty controversial, which usually means that my inbox reaches the point where the meter stops counting and broadcasts its digital laziness to me, leaving me to guess just how many emails I have received for the intellectual merit that my readers say I have, which couldn’t be less true, as no one on this blog is worthy of any scholarly title, but it’s nice to see people label me as some fucking saint or the best college professor they ever had, but I’m sure those names will be stripped from me once I read the comments from my article on capitalism.

There are always these people on the comment section who stumbled upon my article on accident and are either applauding my level of writing or my willingness to express my opinion or sometimes the interesting points I included in the work, and it’s always refreshing to see those, as well as the ones focused on another article that isn’t as debatable as my capitalism draft.

But then there are the ones that every published writer can expect, the ones that are just bouts of rage transmuted into comment form who really make no sense at all and probably still don’t make sense even in the brain of the person that wrote it in their steamy well of anger towards me for being so opinionated as young people apparently should never be, woven into the alternate contradiction that young people only care about trivial matters and need to experience war or something to be credible, and those are the comments to whom I never respond, because honestly...why would anyone waste their time on unintelligible messes of conservative jargon?

I’ve created something flammable, and I’m not ashamed of that, rather proud that I could enact a deed so much like what Lucien does every day, and I admire Lucien greatly, so as he’s approaching me, there’s a rest to my jovial emotions for emotions of idolatry.

Lucien saunters into the sitting room, his “impressionism!” mug faithfully gripped in his hand as he tips it towards my computer in a suggestive gesture. “How many comments are in your inbox right now?”

I pivot towards him from the chair, knowing a secret that he doesn’t but a secret that I’ll share with him to excite him about his work. “So many comments that my inbox can’t even count them.”

Lucien reciprocates my grin, huffing out slightly in relief as that huff mutates into a display of his pearly teeth, and he throws his hands towards the air in elation. “This is great, Allen! You could really go places with this.”

Even now, when Lucien doesn’t consider my blog to be a success, I have too many comments to read, thousands of followers, a broad expanse of readers in a diversity sense, and I used to have far too much time on my hands to accommodate for them, but now that Lucien has whisked me away into his life of beautiful spontaneity, my time has been robbed of me for the pleasance of art and philosophy, but now he’s all of the sudden opposing that, and I know not why. I’m not so sure that Lucien would prefer to supplant his time with me with prolonged sessions of comment reading and article writing, so he must merely be enthralled by the ecstasy of receiving so many comments that they’re practically spilling out of my computer.

And _I_ wouldn’t prefer to have Lucien caught up in this blog business, with all of its ups and downs, like never being acknowledged for an article that you spent so long working on, like feeling unsafe in your own home because someone so ruthlessly disagreed with your opinion to the point where it’s close to a death threat, like becoming stressed at your tight schedule that dictates a lack of time for writing an article, like experiencing the anxiety of disorganization when you have so many unread emails in your inbox, like your flaws being broadcasted to the world while they ignore your many accomplishments, all of that. Lucien is strong, and I’m not saying that he isn’t, but is he acclimated to this kind of life?

When I first noticed the rise of popularity on my blog, I was absolutely thrilled that my work was being observed by people other than myself, but I didn’t realize the kinds of people in the world, the kinds of people that will always be here to bite me in the neck, stab me in the back with hypocrisy that is excused under the anonymous title available to them, and I was then terrified of what I had done, but I didn’t delete my blog. I persevered, and though Edie often had to calm me down after threatening comments, it paid off in the end, and I still witness the fluctuations as any journalist does, but it’s much better than it was, and whether that’s because I’ve adapted to it or because people have learned not to cross me, I’m not certain, but I was in that state of terror for a while, and I don’t want Lucien to experience that as well, even if I can help him through it easier than I was helped through it. I’d rather he stay away from this profession completely so that he won’t be hurt. It’s safer that way, and though it’s less fun (and Lucien craves fun), it’s how I preserve the light swimming in his ocean eyes, so lies are perfect for this situation.

I hate lying to the people I love, but it’s necessary, and Lucien can heal, because as I said before, he’s powerful, reserving indomitable potency in his character that shouldn’t exist because it’s so dynamic yet does anyway and surprises those who doubted him, and I am nothing more than someone whose dubiety he can overcome.

“I already have gone places,” I admit, which is partially true, better than a straight up lie, even if neither of these things are demeaning for the circumstances.

Lucien clicks his hands onto his hips, never settling for the mediocrity and the negativity that I’ve proposed. “Not enough places.”

I can’t always comply with Lucien’s outrageous demands, primarily when he urges me to live the life that I am meant to live and screw the criticism of others, so how is this any different? My writing is supposed to be my own, and Lucien would reinforce that idea, too, and that means he shouldn’t have a say in what I do with it, including how far I extend with it, so I convey that to him in the most oblique of manners. “Well what the hell do you want from me?”

“I want you to flee the prison of solitude and experience the world as it’s meant to be experienced.” Snaring my confusion and scraps of my hesitance, Lucien showers his throat in a disappointed sigh at my inability to infer the evidence he wishes for me to infer. “You’re a writer, for god’s sake! Get out there!” He swipes the air around and around like a wheel, ushering me to get a grip on my life and do something for once instead of staying holed up in the basement or now this apartment that’s too dirty for my appreciation of it yet cozy enough for my desire to remain here forever, but that’s a weighted ordeal that not even Lucien can accomplish.

My fists furl and tie themselves up, bleached by the pressure imposed upon them by my frustration with a boy who will never understand what life is like for a perpetually anxious person. “I _can’t_ get out there, Lucien.” My voice is clenched by my lifelong trials manifesting in vocal form, my worst demons emerging from their cages having acquired the key from a vandal called grievance, and it’s so unlike who I really am, but it’s the only thing that shines through, because dark colors are dominant over light ones, and that is how it’s always been.

But Lucien doesn’t seem to accept that, as he’s laboring to create something out of nothing like we humans do only with mundane concepts called hues, and I want to scream at him, tell him that life doesn’t work the way he wants it do and that’s just how the world goes round, but he wouldn’t accept that, either, and now he’s trying to contradict me again like he can never comprehend when enough is enough, asking, “Well why not?”

Why doesn’t he grasp that I’m not like him? Being like someone isn’t all that productive, and Lucien of all people should be the one to understand this, but he’s expecting me to conform to his spontaneous nature when that’s the thing that attracted me to him but also the thing that landed us in trouble with Edie and down the broken road of potholes and faded lines for direction.

“I’m not like you. I’m not all eccentric and outgoing. I can’t speak to the world without suffering from a voice crack or some equally as atrocious shit that you wouldn’t even dream of.”

Lucien is still as obstinate as ever, now with franticness added to the pile. “You have a computer screen to hide you, though.”

“On the contrary, my readers know who I am.”

“Bullshit,” Lucien protests, now more disappointed in me myself than my lack of aspiration to grow my blog’s success. “Not even _you_ know who you are. Don’t distribute titles to people who would willingly dump you for someone conventionally smarter. You don’t deserve to be degraded like that.” My friend’s breath is steadying now, having released that comment from his heap of burdens stacked in both his heart and the clutter of items in his apartment, but I’m not finished with him yet.

“I’ll do what I please with my life.”

And I now see that his frenzy is far from mitigation, rebirthing itself without a warrant and without so much as a word about it, and Lucien is back in his state of incessant rioting. “But—”

“I’m happy where I am, okay?” I clarify, calming myself in order to also calm my restless companion. “I appreciate your concern, but I’d rather just stay in my current bubble.”

Looming a svelte hand through his golden hair and finally considering what I want and not what he’s forcing me to do, Lucien nods, accompanied by a choppy trickling of air from his lungs, and agrees rather reluctantly, “Yeah, of course, I’m sorry.”

I can tell that he’s let down by my conclusion, but I can’t really be bothered by what he wishes for me, because this is my life, not his, and I shall live it the way I see fit, as that’s what Lucien would want me to do. And that’s settled for now.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: deadass Lucien is as stubborn as my rat of a friend
> 
> innatism: the theory that knowledge is retained in the mind at birth and isn't learned
> 
> ~Dakrappy


	20. faguettes

Electing to ignore our minor debate from earlier this morning, Lucien has decided to take me out for dinner as a celebration of our apparent success, though this success is a normal thing for me, but I’m glad that Lucien is so excited about something that isn’t even his, because that means less work for me if he chooses to contribute something to my articles or blog.

I’m not saying that I don’t appreciate the gesture, just that I don’t understand why Lucien is enacting it, because I wrote an article like I do often, yet Lucien is as elated about it as I was when I received my first comment about eleven months ago. Since it’s close to the year anniversary of my blog’s existence, he should be taking me out for dinner then, not when he’s finally learned about my blog and is avid about it for some strange reason. I would be more ecstatic about the dinner date if it were for my blog’s year anniversary, not some mundane event that transpires almost every day.

Yes, I’ll admit that my most recent article was one that could spark some riots amongst the heavily conservative readers, causing me to lose followers if it was too inflammatory (which it may have been, but that was exactly my goal, so I would be proud if that were the case, and so would Lucien), but those conservative readers don’t mean shit to me, because they’re actually snagging the easy end of the deal with their ability to leave this fucking cesspool and move on with their bigoted lives, and because of that, this article still isn’t worthy of a celebration such as this one.

But I’ll of course pretend to be fervid about this idea, because Lucien is usually a very spirited man who never schedules anything for the people he hangs around, _especially_ the people he hangs around, because like any friend from middle school, he’ll call them a piece of shit and undeserving of being in his line of sight, which may or may not be a joke, and to reserve a spot at a restaurant, a fancy one as well, is unprecedented and, I’ll confess, quite honorable. To even observe Lucien is a treat, but spending a night with him at a dinner that _he_ planned is an amazing thing to caress my fluttering ego.

This is when the nervousness rolls in like one of the many storms of the Dust Bowl, blanketing my perception in the black particles of dust whose only ambition is to kill me, to suffocate me by infesting my throat and pushing and contracting like an accordion with my teeth as the corporeal keys. I shouldn’t be scared of doing something as elementary as eating dinner with one of my closest friends who will not judge me no matter what wild thing I force myself into, as he’ll just shrug and claim that it’s the natural order of life and that writers thrive when they are erratic and misinterpreted, so at least he won’t give a shit, but that was only about twenty five percent of the problem, as Lucien has taught me that I should value myself more than I value others, so the majority of seventy five percent is erupting in disarray with no aim to seek help from a man who will only belittle my terror for a display of art.

However, there’s something peculiar about the expressions Lucien blindfolds me with so that I see only his veneer that calms me down like no one else can, and though I have not told him of my anxiety, he somehow knows through the inferences of his knack for psychology, and he offers a reassuring pat on the back before we step into the restaurant.

A hostess greets us at the front of the facility, lids licked by precise wings of ebony and lips shining with a popping crimson which is severed by her pearly smile, and she leads us to a table after Lucien reviews the information for his reservation that he apparently scheduled an hour after we argued about the success of my blog (a pretty stupid topic about which to argue, if you ask me), and she places us at the back of the room, a booth private enough for the cozy preferences of both of us.

Lucien is almost as frightened as I am, like the common jitters of a teenage boy at the home of his prom date as he silently endeavors to survive the tacit wrath of the girl’s vindictive parents who purposely placed the uber American shotgun in close proximity to the boy while they’re waiting for the girl to prepare herself for the dance. This is so different from the courageous Lucien I know, but I’m not happy that he’s finally experiencing the hell that is nervousness, rather impressed that he admires this wreck of a writer enough to be nervous about eating dinner with me, but as I say, a writer is only an unbloomed organism groping the air for security as they burn in the underworld they elected to see with the artistic lens they’ve invented to document this pit, and if you’re ignorant about the world after residing in hell for as long as you can remember, then you’re not so handy in the reality of other humans, but Lucien escaped that hell a while ago and is only reaching back down briefly for some tendrils of steamy inspiration, so he’s had lots of time to adapt to the world, which means that there’s barely a reason for his apprehension. I’m just a fucking hermit, after all. There’s nothing intimidating about me from what I can decipher.

I nudge him as we’re venturing towards the booth in the back of the restaurant, my volume conserved. “Hey, are you all right?”

Lucien is caught by surprise, as if he was in a trance that brought him nervousness instead of his actual mind, the fully functional one whose magnificence will forever be insurmountable, but he’s even more disorganized now than he was before. He eventually nods at me, though it looks like he has just woken up in an unfamiliar place but is too scared to tell anyone, like he’s only inspecting the place to try and draw his own conclusions.

He’s continues his trip of wariness as the hostess seats us at the table, whose location I’m now realizing is rather convenient for being out of site for Lucien to hide his anxiousness deftly, but he is forced to speak in order to greet the hostess appropriately for the situation, which I assist him in doing, because although he doesn’t recognize _my_ phobias, I’m the integrous friend who would recognize his, but once the waitress departs, Lucien is back to that anxious state, so it’s once again my duty to drag him out of it like the exasperated owner of a rambunctious dog who only wishes to stay in one spot as if a statue.

“Thank you for taking me out to dinner, Lucien,” I acknowledge to break the silence and my companion’s apprehension.

That’s when he warms up as I had hoped he would, sped along by the slight astonishment of my praise, and he jocularly replies, “Well you’re welcome.” Lifting his glass (which has already been filled with cheap champagne) in a toast, Lucien proclaims, “As a celebration of your blog’s prosperity, I have drafted a poem for you, Allen. I just wrote it. Here it is.” Lucien unclogs his throat, composing both himself and the poem, because it’s clear that he has no idea what he’s doing, though I would appreciate anything he spewed out at me with the intentions for it to be cherished. “Remember when I was a child, when my skin was clear and I wasn’t queer—”

“Your skin is still clear,” I interject, like a teacher hollering from the back of the classroom about how the kid presenting their project is delivering a lie meant to save their ass but a lie that the teacher can see through easily and calls out for being faulty.

I can’t really argue the queer part, as if someone were to examine only one minute of our conversations, they’d have notebooks stocked with anecdotes of our sexual tension and homoerotic subtext, and even I am aware of that. First in the library, Lucien informed me that he was “gay as hell”, though he later amended that he’s “omnisexual as hell”, another philosophical treat for him to glorify every gender for being perfect and just the way that nature has shaped them to be, and there are too many other accounts of his blatant homosexuality for me to list. Though I have never kissed him or agreed to any relationship besides a platonic one, there are subtle reminders sprinkled across our discussions that gently hints that we basically already are a romantic couple, at least one from a stereotypical high school novel about the rare gays of the education department. Long story short, Lucien is queer as fuck, and he’s tugging me into this storm.

Kicking my legs from underneath the table, Lucien playfully orders, “Don’t counter me, Ginsberg.” He’s laughing, and that laugh is a truly beautiful thing, like honey and the intangible crackling of a fire have joined together in a union of magnificence and have bestowed their gifts upon this boy, and I wish to revel in it forever, but it is when Lucien glances across the room to another table that the exuberant birds of his vocal chords are plucked and gagged.

He rises from his seat, folding his napkin precisely as he found it in a matter of seconds, and he scoots away, leaving me with only five plain words expelled in the calmest of tones that I know hosts acrimony underneath. “I’m going to the bathroom.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: shit gets wild and you are all dead
> 
> absurdism: man's attempt to find meaning in the universe will fail because there is no meaning
> 
> ~Dakotoenail


	21. cue erotica intro

The chatter of the restaurant guests is all that I can imbibe, as Lucien’s metaphysical backwash is now silent in the bathroom, and I’m not really sure when he’ll be back to fill the empty gaps again, so for the time being, I’m learning a lot by eavesdropping on the other guests. For example, one family is preparing to sell their house to buy another one, even though they don’t need it with their healthy neighborhood and fulfilled needs. Another family is discussing the poor grades of their youngest child as said youngest child complains that they’re being unfair and misinformed and that if they confiscate his baseball bat then he’ll hit them with it before they can. And then there’s a couple much like Lucien and me, eyes bright yet shadowed in the eaves, smiles hugging their lips to try and cover the manufacturing of melancholy gearing in their muted souls, because a dinner date is supposed to be an escape from the underworld in which they’ve been residing, but depression is perpetual, unwilling to be hushed by people who just want to experience neutrality again at the least.

I sip my champagne quietly as I continue to listen to the conversations around me, reserved in a web of solitude now that Lucien is partying in the bathroom and has been in there for not much longer than a minute, and it feels odd to be without company now that Lucien has always been by my side for a little under a week, and that odd feeling shoves me into a cramped box and orders me to curl smaller than the box actually is, with the anxiety poking nails into the steel with a robust force spun by years of practice in the dictatorship of my mind, and I’m not sure if I will be free before Lucien returns.

The lighting stacked against the restaurant’s walls is as dim as a premonition floating through my head in the current moment, a premonition that I wish to neglect but a premonition that I _cannot_ neglect, no matter how arduously I labor to, and Lucien isn’t here to save me from it, because Lucien is affiliated with that premonition, and now there’s only one thing to aid me, entering in through the front door as if a guest, though they’ve been tasked with the job of _entertaining_ the guests.

The restaurant apparently has hired a smooth jazz band for the evening, and about two minutes after Lucien leaves for the bathroom, that’s when they appear seemingly out of nowhere, their instruments toted faithfully in the musicians’ arms as they carry them towards the stage, where they then assemble their setup for a convivial show.

They’re joyful men, always smiling whenever they do anything, which would certainly be an amazing prospect to reach, but it’s just not logical from the standpoint of a metaphysical writer, as I thrive off of my darkness while simultaneously endeavoring to fortify myself against it enough so that it won’t consume me, a tricky game for both a writer and the writer’s visual proteges. Even so, happiness is the final paradise for someone like me, and most people would relinquish their writing ability to obtain it, but the musicians already have, for they’re wallowing in the opportunity to enact what they love and be jovial while doing it, in addition to being able to woo others with their music, when all I do for people is propel them towards an urge to hire a psychiatrist for me.

The musicians, once they have arranged all that they need for a spectacular show, wield their instruments and puff out smoke rings of sound, a river for the ears, a tonic for the restless soul, and I find myself entranced in its steady flow of only minor fluctuations, forgetting all about Lucien and about our dinner and about life in general.

But good things can’t last forever, and they usually don’t even last for longer than a minute when they’re the best things, so when the song closes, I am reminded that Lucien has been in the bathroom for far too long to being performing the bodily functions, far too long to be performing _anything_ , and his goal of celebrating my blog’s success in his perspective has been annihilated, as he’s deserted me in the open space of the restaurant to sit there all alone like my date has either abandoned me prematurely after finding me a bore or has never bothered to show up at all, and the former may be correct based on the common location to claim they’re going to, the bathroom.

However, Lucien doesn’t seem the type to drop someone without so much as a warning, as that’s extremely unkind of him, and though he gives no shits about what other people think, he doesn’t go out of his way to actively harm them, so there must be something amiss, and he’s in the bathroom to clear his head.

He had been nervous when he departed, so that piece of the investigation informs me that Lucien isn’t in there for any bodily activities, rather to find a place to hide from whatever it was that he saw out here that wouldn’t be in the bathroom where he is, but I have no fucking clue why he’s so anxious about that sight. Yeah, he was nervous about being at dinner with me, but that passed once we began to talk, so I really don’t know if it was something I did or if it was something that he saw that unnerved him to the point where he brashly stood up from his seat, slid out of the booth, walked past the thing of whom he’s so afraid, and burst into the bathroom, where he most likely is now, and I’m not certain when he’ll emerge from his cocoon of safety and bits of fear dashed into the mix.

Many people have thrown pitying stares my way, which I have quietly deflected by swiveling my head away from them so that I don’t have to address their sickening sympathy that doesn’t mean shit to me when my friend is in trouble, but that trouble is so flimsy that I’m not sure it’s present, so I’m debating whether or not I should journey into the bathroom to drag Lucien out of hell, and I don’t need the falsified stares of old people to shove roadblocks in my way, but eventually it reaches the point where those stares of wrinkly deterioration in corporeal form are quite displeasing, and they offer me an incentive to search the bathroom for my friend crumbling within the plastic blue of the stalls.

Cautiously I levitate from my position at the booth, speaking to the wall if I ever were to speak because Lucien obviously isn’t here to absorb my words that are fruitless anyway, and without moving anywhere else, I already snare the attention of those same old people who were staring at me earlier, but I don’t allow that to hinder my motivation. Lucien is worth more than the folks who ruined our economy, and with that in mind, I troop towards the bathroom where my companion will be, and I simultaneously ignore the focus drilling into me from all sides, which I usually wouldn’t be able to ignore, but now that Lucien has granted me more confidence in myself and my skills, I feel as though I can do anything in this moment.

The hostess prepares to object to my visit across the restaurant with the misconception that I’m leaving the place without paying for the paltry meal of a sip from my champagne glass, but when she observes that I’m crossing over to the other half of the buildings, to where the bathrooms are, she halts herself and only watches me stride over there with less and less apprehension weighing me down, when it should really be the opposite, because I am clueless as to what Lucien is doing in the bathroom, yet I’m proud of myself for going to investigate the matter, as that’s something I would never even consider doing on a regular day.

Gulping down a profound ball of air, I push through the door to the bathroom to find that there is only one person in here, my conjecture based on the stifled sobs that still burst through the veneer that my companion has constructed out of a phobia of people judging him for being the weak fool he judges others for being, but I’m perhaps the least biased out of all of them, and that’s why he’s chosen me as his unspoken protege.

Instantaneously after I enter the bathroom, I want to flee it, as this is too much for me to handle, this unbloomed freak show of a self struggling in its bonds, but it’s my duty to help Lucien, because he won’t confront me out of his own volition, and though it’s difficult for me to do so, I must aid my companion when he won’t ever aid himself.

“Go away, Allen,” Lucien yelps, already knowing that as his friend, I am requiring myself to come to his side when he is jittering inconsolably in a fucking bathroom stall.

It’s my chance to be as stubborn as Lucien is, and I don’t really give a shit if he despises it, because that’s what I had to endure when he was in this position, too, so I negate, “No, I’m not leaving you.”

Lucien bangs against the plastic door of the stall, rattling the entire framework coating the bathroom in cohesion, frustrated with my obstinacy. “God damn it, Allen! Just _go_.” His voice is as hard as the material dividing us, and because of that, I cannot see his face, but I know that it must be as exasperated as I am when he’s just like this to me.

“I’m never deserting you, Lucien.” And I’m staying forever.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: oooOOOh the m y s t e r y
> 
> accidentalism: events occur by chance instead of by a cause
> 
> ~Dacrabby


	22. all this mouth does is complain

Lucien is no doubt spontaneous, but with that spontaneity comes stubbornness, which I really didn’t need in a moment of laboring to lug Lucien out of the locked bathroom stall and back into the main dining area where he would sit the fuck down and resume the activity he had planned earlier today in order to celebrate my blog’s perpetual success and hope to neglect the minor argument that ensued this morning,

It required at least ten minutes worth of promises to lure Lucien out of his bathroom stall, the only protection for a man like him who is usually so outgoing and fearless but was then shivering at the sight of something whose identity I am unaware of, and he was extremely reluctant, but this is not the sort of reluctance that comprises Lucien’s character, rather a reluctance birthed out of a phobia of doing something, not because he prefers to go his own way in life and fuck the opinions of others.

The man who exited the bathroom stall was not the man I know, the man who cackles in the home of fear, the man who follows his whims without considering the consequences because he’ll find a way out of them, the man who jumps from topic to topic like life is more fleeting than it actually is. That is not the one I saw. The man who exited the bathroom stall was broken, and irreversibly so. He’s seen monsters unlike nothing I’ve ever witnessed, and he just saw another one

Lucien elucidated the fact that he is powerful to me a while ago, and I have long since understood that, but this is not him, and this is not me. Why would Lucien Carr run from danger? Why would Lucien Carr refuse to address it again once calming down enough for me to be able to cajole him into unlocking the door to the bathroom stall? Why would Lucien Carr be in shambles after seeing something that should only slightly piss him off at the least? Yeah, I don’t know what that something was, but how terrible could it be? It’s a fancy restaurant in which he noticed it, for god’s sake! He loves to overreact, yet I don’t suppose this is much of an overreaction, as his kinds of overreactions are marked by a high volume and a philosophical lesson afterwards, but all I received after he finally emerged from the bathroom stall was a man in the fetters of his own mind.

Stripped of dignity, we paint with crimson blood and cascading tears smeared across canvases as broad as the institutions that kept us in tight locks, in cells and in chambers and in our own flaking minds whose only deliverance is the knife of revenge where finally the fluid chipped is not our own, the carbon monoxide agony of twenty-seven airplanes buzzing chaotically in freedom and in yelps, one for each year we were imprisoned and for the year that we became free, sputtering in long awaited asphyxiation, where the grave is the best location we can attain for matter destroyed by tantalizing objections and taunting whispers of what could be but what hasn’t been for a while, sculpting features into daggers to impress squares, huffing paint in a back alleyway and hoping to be arrested because prison has better food than food for thought, though we have been starving for a while — starved of our confidence, starved of our trust, starved of nostalgic nights under blankets and peaceful misconceptions in the burrows of Roanoke, where our bedtime story was the shrieking of our sisters against trees that slit their names into their mahogany wrists to force them to stay, where morals stride unquenched through bustling city streets, where our ears cloud over with soot to neglect the pleas of our mothers ordering us to wash the dishes left dirty from the mercurial age of thirteen, pubescence clenched between teeth wracked in the standardized wires of conformity who also conform solely by existing, who serve as a role model imposed by idols creasing with each lie they fold under their skin to contemplate later, and none of that pulls at us like the moon pulls at the tides, for this is not born from control. This is the rebellion we have created, and this is our jailbreak after years of suppression.

But Lucien is somehow weakened by this rebellion, by this jailbreak, by the sight of something whose influence over him he never would’ve predicted, which throws a wrench in this artistic revolution of his, and now he’s inordinately sorry about what transpired at the restaurant, apologizing over and over to me throughout the walk back to the apartment and even now as we glide into the streets to settle down and drift across the sea of sleep to a place where all is better than life really is, but we can’t reach that state when Lucien is chattering about how he ruined everything for me and how he was inadvertently exaggerating and only now realizes the effects of his intractability, though I’m not blaming him for any of it. He didn’t ruin anything, and I’m much more concerned with his belief that he did ruin it than with the vagary itself.

Will he tear himself apart over this? Because from what I can tell, he already is, and he can’t seem to settle down into sleep, as he’s rocking the boat to the point where the prospect of capsizing is stretching from the sea and cackling at us, for we are its next prey, and Lucien isn’t doing anything about it. His panic evoked the shaking of the capsule, and it will not cease, and Lucien doesn’t really give a shit about it, because he needs a way to solve his problems. He will only halt when he has calmed down, but when will that occur? All I see from the mattress of the bed is Lucien bouncing all around within the sharp confines of that box in which he is trapped, but he makes the most of his limited space by utilizing it to shift the entire frame with his movement, then proceeding with his incessant chattering about how much he is sorry about something for whom I’m not blaming him.

“I’m a fucking idiot, Allen,” Lucien admits, shoveling the dirt of his hands over his head to protect him as a grave. “I screwed up everything by being so fucking dramatic. It’s not that big of a deal anyway.”

Part of this self-deprecating spiel is because Lucien actually means it (and bless his soul if he’s telling the absolute truth), but most of it is probably derived from the stress of whatever lured him to the bathroom in the first place, though I’m still not certain what is plaguing him, so I cannot conjecture all that accurately, and I cannot help him to the full extent.

I offer a hand to him, planting my fingers on the outside of his arm gently and reassuring him, “Hey, you did nothing wrong.”

“No, I did do something wrong,” Lucien negates, and here he goes with the stubbornness. “We were supposed to be enjoying a nice dinner to celebrate your blog’s success, but I just _had_ to be a wimp and flee to the bathroom.” My companion’s shoulders scab into stone, imbued by malevolence towards himself and malevolence towards the object that spooked him enough to usher him into the bathroom through fucking telekinesis or something. “I should just plan a trip to Alaska, though I might mess that trip up too, but all I need is to jump off of a cliff. _Why_ can’t I jump off of a cliff?”

I would’ve never assumed that Lucien is basking in the contemplation of suicide, of throwing himself from a ledge coasting on the higher meters of elevation who are sure to break his bones and kill him instantly when he collides with the snowy ground, and even the sheet of alabaster cannot save him, as it’s as flimsy as this relationship yet as rock hard as Lucien’s ambition to apologize endlessly about something he doesn’t need to apologize for at all.

I have always identified Lucien Carr as a man of free spirit and passion for everything he glimpses, detesting nothing but the world who warped people’s minds to divest the appreciation of nature from them, a man who wants to stay alive for as long as he can so that he can enjoy all that life has to offer, a man who seeds a smile upon his stunning complexion highlighted by the glimmer of his teeth, a man who would hate to die, especially in a voluntary manner, so what is this display of depression? Who is this man? I had expected an impenetrable resilience from a lover, and there’s no doubt that Lucien is resilient, but the cracks in his character and in his stability are far too wide to be sustainable — wider, I dare say, than his perception of life.

And I really have no idea what to say to him, because I understand that suicidal people are hell bent on death unless their life improves for the better of them and those around them, but writers are perpetually incarcerated in the underworld with no hope for an escape, but we writers love to lie, implementing them everywhere in our work, so that’s the only route to Lucien. “People will care if you’re gone.”

“You know that’s not true, Allen. People don’t give a single shit about writers. They only want their words, and they’ll do anything to obtain them, never ceasing even if I’m suffering or if I’m dying or if I’m already in the grave, because they say beauty is eternal, so what does it matter if _I’m_ not? My words will live forever, and I am destined to a fucking tomb. You never win this game, Ginsy. You, of all people, should know that.”

He’s correct, and I hate that he’s correct, but this is an ineluctable fact that we are never free to join our words wholly, though I don’t care to confess to it, so I only enmesh Lucien’s hands in mine to reply to his devastating truth, delving into the priorities of my soul to expel them for my companion. “Speak to me and tell me of your woes, for they have festered inside of you for far too long. One day you will rupture, and one day you will regret allowing yourself to decay.”

One day, Lucien will not be able to bear the weight of his burdens upon his back. His spine will snap, he will deteriorate, and life will move on as if nothing ever happened, yet it did. Lucien is a roadblock upon the street of existence, always in people’s line of sight so that he’ll be recognized as extraordinary, and he _is_ recognized as extraordinary by everyone he encounters, but one day that will be too much for him to handle, because he has never clarified to anyone that being extraordinary is a strenuous job.

Lucien is quiet now, fuel truncated by the compression of his lips together, and he eventually flops on his side, towards the window and away from me, because quite frankly it’s easier that way. “I saw someone I hadn’t seen in a while, and that’s it. Just stop asking me about it. I’ll be fine by the morning.” And I’ll just have to trust him on that.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: why do I end every chapter with a sentencing beginning with "and" lmao bye dakota get more creative
> 
> objectivism: certain acts are wholly right or wrong
> 
> ~Dakrunk


	23. I wake up at 4:30 to suffer

Lucien is awake when I return from the sea of sleep, the sailboat having docked with a crash and jolted me back to life to glimpse the sunny aspects of the apartment, like the curtains wobbling in the incoming wind, like the slight clawing of tree branches at the frame of the building in places that I cannot detect them, like the morning sunlight rolling in from the street outside and illuminating my companion’s entire body, golden threads upon his scalp and all, and it is in this light that I notice the contraption held in Lucien’s lap as he types away at it furiously, focused solely on his work.

The clicks of his typewriter set the mood for my thoughts, a rhythm to follow while I ponder what he could be writing and why he won’t ever show it to me when I would show my writing to him, especially after he said that I was the only one worthy enough to read his work after years of locking it up for the relieving bliss of privacy, though if he were to show me his writing now, the ties of ethereal beauty in this position would be snapped, the ties of gold upon his head as it’s accentuated by the sunlight spilling inside of the apartment and onto the hardwood panels from the window, the ties of blackening anchor line upon the border of his ocean eyes, the ties of his white t-shirt bobbing up and down steadily with his breathing, the ties of his fingers guiding the poetry of his mental furnace, the poetry that has entranced me many times before.

I don’t wish to disturb him, as he’s heavily concentrated on whatever it is that he’s writing, and I really don’t even know the general gist of what it is, because he’s never elucidated what kind of author he is, so that’s probably the only reason why I would bother him, but that can wait, for he is truly spectacular in this moment.

My companion doesn’t acknowledge me from his work at the typewriter — I don’t think he even saw me, either — but that’s okay. He’s too beautiful to be dulled by the acceptance of my dreary presence beside him, with his face bonded by the glue of diligence and deep rooted passion for his draft. It’s alluring to witness Lucien in this state of deliberation, when he’s only seen _me_ write and I haven’t seen _him_ write, when I’m snagging that opportunity now, and I must admit that it’s a wondrous experience.

Lucien cocks back the bar on the typewriter to begin a new line of new words and new ideas and new ways to think about things, and he’s instantaneously at the heels of the page with a menacing fire spitting from his extremities. He’s on a roll, gushing with sentences and paragraphs and pages of brilliance, of metaphysics, of the candid misery of the soul. The trudging of the inky vestibule upon smoothened parchment is what captures me, how it resembles the trotting of a horse laden with the drug of freedom, how Lucien is so engrossed in it, how adorable he is when he’s excited about an activity.

But anyone must agree that a typewriter is too archaic for a man who claims that life is always carrying on, so to use contraptions from so far in the past would be like a crime to him. Yes, he is fascinated by everything in the world, which sometimes includes previous versions of everything in the world, but the typewriter is an object that would immediately repel Lucien if he were to stick to his logic. Lucien says that the old maxims of writing are complete and utter bullshit, which I can’t disprove and wouldn’t wish to disprove anyway, but a typewriter is where the old maxims of writing occurred, where they were perpetuated so that they linger even today. Is this merely satire, has he forgotten, or does he not give a fuck? I intend to find out.

I rise from the bed on my elbow for support, tilted still on my side, because there’s no way in hell I’m departing this mattress when I can barely feel my limbs after lugging Lucien out of the bathroom stall last night, which was much more difficult than I ever would’ve predicted, and now that same boy is confusing me immensely with his odd machine, telekinetically roping my brows together in an expression of bewilderment. “Why the fuck are you using a typewriter?”

The corner of Lucien’s mouth quirks upward, as if he was praying that I would ask that exact question, just so he can display more accounts of his pretentiousness, and his head swivels towards me with his answer. “I use a typewriter to bring me back to the time when we weren’t polluted by the media, when we weren’t scared of the emotions our words could evoke.”

It’s obvious that he abhors the world and all of the disastrous repercussions from the faulty laws it imposes tacitly yet faulty laws that stick with everyone no matter what, as if these laws are an obligatory download to the brain, but this world has existed forever. This isn’t a fresh phenomenon sparked only in the twenty-first century. We’ve always been in hell, and we’ve always been polluted by the media, and we’ve always been scared of emotions, scared of being imprisoned for the demagogues of our words, and a typewriter won’t fix that.

But like I’ve gathered many times before, Lucien is obstinate enough to reject that idea if it doesn’t suit his ambitions, simultaneously fabricating a philosophical backstory for his decision to walk the road of foolishness, and this is no exception. I am more aware of Lucien’s personality than he thinks I am, but he is blinded by his arrogance, and it’s my duty to poke the necessary holes in his plan.

I play ignorant so as to spare Lucien’s ego, opting for another reason why this archaic contraption is illogical. “Isn’t a typewriter tedious, though?”

“Anyone can use it if it’s worth something. I find that we writers enjoy utilizing the typewriter so often because each click and flare of ink upon the paper provides us with a sense that our brains are still functional, but what about me?” Lucien stares at me desperately as if I have an answer for him, but I don’t, so he elaborates. “I continue to tap away at the typewriter, yet I have no idea where my mind has gone. Are my words simply ghosts devoid of the substance to inspire?”

Is my companion so spontaneous because he doesn’t know anything else? Is he incapable of remembering new ideas, a child of anterograde amnesia? How hollow is he inside? How prolonged of a period did he steal to construct a veneer for himself to hide that notion? I don’t care if he’s hollow, because I could lift him from that somehow. I could find a way, and reminding him that he’s important to me is the first step.

“You inspire me every day, Lucien,” I soothe him with a linguistic awakening, angling my head as though I’m just now realizing something tragic, which I suppose isn’t so far off. “Don’t you know that?”

Surely through his vanity he would recognize that he’s worth something other than his metaphysical flow, but that is somehow not the case. He’s more melancholy than extroverts in the winter, more solitary than introverts in the summer, more glum than I ever would’ve thought someone like him could be, and I’m just so fucking exasperated and hopeless, because I have no clue why this is transpiring.

“No, I don’t, because I was lonely, Allen, and then all of the sudden depression came along and told me that I could have friends if I simply slipped a gag over my mouth, and what kind of person who has been lost in the sea of their own mind would pass that up? A fool, Allen, and I hate being a fool, so I accepted those terms, placed the gag far enough down my throat that I could feel my insides thrashing, and soon found that the only friend I had received was depression, but it wasn’t even a friend, rather a dictator who continues to reelect itself without opposition, because I accepted those terms, Ginsy, and I can’t do a single thing about altering them.”

I’m silent, not because I don’t have anything to say, just because I don’t want to say anything that will wreck the foundation we’ve spent arduous time building throughout the span that we’ve known each other, which is barely a week yet a week furnished by expansiveness, and that’s already decrepit enough, so there’s no use in saying anything at all, because each vibration from my voice shakes the scaffolding until it crumbles completely.

Lucien turns to me, finally broaching one topic at least in order to stray from the other, though it’s oblique and irrelevant to our prior subject of discussion. “We’re going to the carnival tonight, yeah? I need to repent or something.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: carnivals are lit but lucien's sadness is not
> 
> pacifism: an opposition to violence
> 
> ~Dakotell-my-child-lucien-i'm-sorry


	24. prepare for homosexuality

I haven’t visited a carnival since I was ten years old, out with my parents for a special occasion after my father read in the newspaper that the most spectacular circus he saw when in Italy was sojourning in the town, and he had recently received a raise from his boss, a man who usually pushed him towards every breaking point but withdrew him right before the wire of his stability cracked and he tumbled to the dirt. That carnival was an amazing experience while it lasted, despite the masses of people filing in and out of my vision and swarming all around my heavily guarded periphery, because back then I wasn’t nearly as anxious as I am now, so carnivals were the highlight of my life when I hadn’t yet delved into my passion for metaphysical writing and existential despair, and they were the source of my daydreaming fun.

My mother had won me a stuffed bear that year, as blue as Lucien’s ocean eyes with prospect as grand as his, and I’ve cherished it ever since. However, that treasury only exists in my mind, as an unfortunate event two months after the carnival excursion bulldozed my teddy bear to the point of no return, and yes, I was devastated, but why have corporeal items when you can reserve them in your mind without the clutter? That’s kind of what writing is, now that I think about it — storing different types of underworlds in your mind for different types of demons, avoiding the conflict of reality whenever it is possible, fabricating stories out of the magic of white and grey brain matter joining together in pure humanity, everything that could ever be stocked inside of an organ and that organ’s outward personality.

But now my organ and my organ’s outward personality have turned against me, betrayed the qualities with which I thought I was familiar until those are only the remnants of a well fed childhood, but now I am a writer who writes because they have involuntarily neglected the bliss of joy because of our distorted personalities slandered by adulthood. That is the sole thing we writers are adept at, because we are burrowed in trenches and in all of the broken places so that we may be forgotten. We who are estranged from civil decency will die in civil decency, because the world strives to lure us into our worst fears without blinking, writing us into stories we are unaware of, and in that doom is where we rot against the unforgiving splinters of our coffins, never to be seen again as internalized rage ferments inside of us like wine as ancient as our hatred for institution.

And it is a blight when a writer such as that is forced to venture outside for something as commercial as a carnival when they’d much rather dwell in their manmade underworlds and dingy basements, not be greeted by people I’ll never see again, people who will sprout poisonous berries of envy towards others in a matter of seconds once they glimpse an item as mundane as a prize that they’ve won from an almost impossible game, and writers despise those people. Those are the people writers write _about_ , the annoying side character who just won’t leave, no matter what the protagonist does, but even if there aren’t too many people like that, people in general are a curse to a writer.

There are lots of citizens at carnivals, which is a blessing for Lucien, who enjoys observing every aspect of life somatized into bodies tinged by sunspots and wrinkles and skin tones and everything that the world has deposited upon them, but it’s a curse for me, who despises human interaction and would have been content with living in Edie and Jack’s basement until I die from a lack of nutrition and Vitamin D, and though my social skills have improved since I moved in with Lucien, they’re still not at the approximate baseline of the average human, but Lucien will not settle unless he’s repented for a crime that he doesn’t need to repent, and I can’t just refuse a night on the exclusively theatrical town with my best friend to protect my limited comfort zone, shriveled to the size of a pea, and he’s joyous in this moment, as he waits for the administrator clad in an outrageous clown costume to permit him to enter the carnival, because it’s clear that he is quite enamored by these places, and I don’t hope to ruin that for him. Even if this is to repent but Lucien is here mostly to have a good time, I won’t judge him for that, because a good time is something he deserves and has deserved for a while. Metaphysicists like him need a break sometimes.

“Aren’t you just pleased?” Lucien chirps, huddled beside me with eyes as buoyant as a child who would be visiting this place anyway, and although I can admit that I don’t wish to spoil Lucien’s jocularity, that’s not going to persuade me to follow the same route, as anxiety isn’t hindered by the fulfillment of the susceptible masses, but I nod nevertheless, and he is henceforth complacent. He boils with each moment that the administrator hesitates, but it’s not a stew pot of anger, rather a stew pot of elation with so much intensity that I doubt I’ve witnessed it before from a generally calm person like him, though when he’s riled up by topics such as Greek and Roman mythology on the tables of the library, it’s difficult to smother his artistic bubbling.

Finally, after a few minutes of anticipation, the administrator allows us into the park, and upon this permission, Lucien practically drags me past the egg shell gates as if he’s a child who has been wound up by only a few _seconds_ of anticipation, a common effect of a young age, and it requires the zenith of my strength to not fall over onto the foliaceous ground and receive a face full of leaves and dirt and familiar cackling from behind me.

“Calm down, Lucien!” I order, still being towed by the spirit of an oxen, a spirit that I was unaware he possessed in such an abundance, and through the turmoil I begin to wonder how many secrets he reserves in his ostensibly fragile limbs.

Lucien never pivots towards me, opting for an argument about how I’m just being a Debby downer and a pushover to the demons of anxiety, negating, “But there are so many people!”

“Yeah, that’s the point.”

Taking me by surprise, Lucien whirls around all of the sudden, his ocean eyes grilled by fire upon polluted seas, and he suggests, “How about we ride the Ferris wheel? That sounds like fun.”

I hope to inform him that it may be fun to him, but it’s definitely not fun to me after terrible experiences with a fear of heights, though he’s already rambling about how alluring it is, how the science operates in such a way that it’s ignored by common people to instead bask unknowingly in the romantic ambience it creates, and he allots no room for my protests of my anxiety towards it and how that anxiety cannot be resolved by how fun it sounds to other people, but I know that even if I could remind him of that, he wouldn’t listen anyway.

So I only glance up to the beast of a machine, the metal supporting the structure that will support my death a threat looming far over me. It retains too much power for it to assure me that it’s fine. It could fucking tip me from one of its wobbling chairs, and though it’s reinforced by the same science that Lucien was chattering endlessly about, I don’t trust it to be fully operational. There are always flukes. People will tell others that there’s no use in being apprehensive and that nothing will happen to them, but that’s what the injured riders thought right before they were wounded by a machine that claimed to be loyal to their joyriding desires.

The same goes for people. You can’t trust them, chiefly right off the bat, because humans are always in it for their own personal gain and don’t really give a shit about others when you get to the core of their hearts, and they’d willingly tip someone out of their wobbling seats if it meant the load would be off of their back, and I suppose I’m not so far from that. I’ve spent so long trying to separate myself from other humans, but the truth is that we all have brains, and those brains all work essentially in the same way in the basics. Yes, there are variations which we unjustly shame, but a brain is a brain at its roots in one’s skull. And Lucien is using his to torment mine, so I must tell him off.

“I’m scared of Ferris wheels,” I admit in the plainest of manners, not sharing _why_ I’m scared of them, but I presume that’s somewhat self-explanatory when you glance at the beast of a machine.

Lucien swings my arms along with him, only a bit frustrated by my opposition, mostly just exuberant for a ride on the Ferris wheel. “Life is about fucking the consequences, Allen.”

I release his hands, peevishness cajoling my voice towards its shadowy depths. “What if I don’t want to fuck the consequences?”

The emotion is wiped from his face, only dropping subtle dashes of disappointment in me. “Then you’re like a leaf riding a wave. You don’t go any place different, but you think you are, because the wave is moving. However, all you do is float along the transverse illusion to absolutely nowhere.”

Lucien doesn’t ever allow me to argue with his philosophical spiels, so it is my only choice to accept, simultaneously killing myself. But we’re all dead anyway, right? That’s what Lucien would say, though I’m not so trusting of Lucien right now. Maybe he’ll be tipped out of the chair.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: wow these morbid thoughts about your bae falling from a ferris wheel very nice allen
> 
> physicalism: everything has a physical property
> 
> ~Dakotip-me-out-of-this-ferris-wheel


	25. lmao they high af

“Lucien, this is fucking terrifying.”

Being tens upon tens of feet in the air is certainly a thrill of the perverse kind, but increasing that altitude is even worse, because you can feel yourself drifting away from humanity, and sometimes that’s what I wish to do, but floating higher only reminds me of heaven, and I know I’m not allowed in there and will never be after all of the sacrilegious text I’ve spewed from my fingers.

And there’s no use in attempting to depart from the ride, as we’re already cycling through the air around and around again, and Lucien is so stubborn that he would probably pin me to the chair until my muscles tensing would erase my memory of ever desiring to leave. It’s becoming hazy if Lucien is here to repent or if he’s here to have a good time, for he will not listen to me, the person to whom this penance is directed, and it’s not that he’s indifferent towards me, rather that he’s shoving me into this contraption of doom and untrustworthy science.

I’ve never been the science guy, but I at least understand it well enough to understand other things in the world, and I understand that this Ferris wheel should be fully operational. However, there are always accidents, and I could be tragically involved in one of them, and I don’t have insurance after spending ten months in a fucking basement where the only reason I would get hurt would be if I tripped over something in the dark when I was supposed to be sleeping and hiding from Edie’s motherly guard.

I’ve expressed to Lucien that I abhor Ferris wheels, yet he still does not listen to my warning. He’s not in danger, per se, but I am, and all I require is to be off of this rotisserie of doom. On the contrary, Lucien is too intractable for an allowance of that, so I’m stuck here with the spiteful thoughts about how Lucien is supposed to be my friend who would do anything for me, about how Lucien is nevertheless the kind of man who would neglect the pleas of others just to broaden their life as if that’s what they want, when really all they need is what they have or what’s just out of their reach, things that Lucien could deftly acquire for them, and that would be it. But no, he’s so engrossed with trying to chart the expanse of life, and he’ll die in that ordeal while I’ll be safely in the basement waiting for him to return but knowing that he never will, because he does this spontaneity shit to himself, and he will address the repercussions when he’s tipping out of the chair of a Ferris wheel like he’ll be doing pretty soon when I begin to struggle.

Lucien huffs out a smile accompanied by his hands clasping mine as if we’re intimate with each other, as if I’m not panicking to the maximum on this godforsaken ride. “That’s the point of life. I already told you this, Allen.”

The problem with Lucien is that he acts as though he’s never encountered roadblocks before, yet he also acts as though he knows them better than anyone else, but where are his trenches? In the past? How do you suck the marrow from your past when that’s something writers choose to discard because not even a horror story could capture its potency?

“You must’ve been scared of something before. You’re not excluded.”

“Actually, I have been, and I still am, because do you see me trembling at it now?” Lucien negates, the kind of motivational speaker we all want to tell to shut up because they know nothing of pain and never will, because their words are dripping with fallacy, because they’re sharing their inspirational stories with the smoke screen of deception fogging it up not to them but to the audience in the most obvious of manners.

“Tell me what you were previously scared of, Lucien, and I’ll try to cross my own battlefields into victory.” I know he won’t be able to name one, because Lucien Carr has never been afraid of anything, according to his fiery persona, and that fiery persona will block his fears in his memories even if he does, in fact, retain ones of being scared of something, and Lucien will therefore have to confess that he is a lying con man who knows nothing more than deceit.

However, he actually has something to say, though it’s probably a lie formulated on the spot, but it’s nevertheless impressive that he could retort so hastily. “Believe it or not, I was absolutely scared of the dark.”

The dark? Lucien Carr, scared of something as mundane as the fucking dark? That’s the common fear of a child! Or was he a child when he was scared of it and just learned to grow up? If so, then I’m still a child, because Lucien would argue that I am an unbloomed flower on the tree of life, too timid to emerge into my true destiny or whatever hippie shit he preaches, but how early did _he_ bloom if I’m so late at the age of twenty-three? He’s only one year older, for god’s sake, yet he’s experienced so much more, including fear and defeating that fear, and I intend to figure out how I can bloom, though I shouldn’t be so reliant on Lucien’s opinions, because he’s never so reliant on other people’s opinions.

“So why are you no longer scared of it?”

Lucien nods to assure himself, not meeting my gaze even if doing so would prompt me towards the drug of a demagogue, which would evidently help him, but he’s so definite in himself that he would refuse it anyway. “I overcame it like you need to, as life isn’t about setbacks when it’s already an obstacle course.”

I shift in my seat and then apprehend the wobbling and tipping of my body to the ground, though that is not the case (this time, at least). “You’re just another one of those setbacks.”

Lucien’s glare drills into me, deep into my heart to unveil my many secrets, and he commands, “Then overcome me.”

I trap myself in the underworld of contemplation, and it’s a troubling one of pandemic hesitance and fear, but it’s a necessary one that I require to sort through my next step. There are so many things I could do, such as push Lucien off of the Ferris wheel and prove that this ride isn’t so safe after all and that he shouldn’t have forced me onto it because I could be met with the same fate, or I could remain silent and piss Lucien off that way, as his head is always buzzing for communication, and if I am quiet, then he’ll feel the urge to say something, but he’ll have no idea what to say, and he’ll either lock himself inside of the capture of a gag, or he’ll spurt out some random bullshit showcasing his wariness.

It demands a lot of courage to enact what I am about to enact, but courage is what Lucien claims I need to overcome any fear, and I suppose this is one of them, because I’m almost shaking at the idea of it, but it must be done, because this is how I overcome my fear.

The ebony night sky sets the perfect ambience for the occasion, stars slapped against the air to twinkle and beam at the success I hope I’ll attain with this action proceeding in a matter of seconds, and I can conjecture that they’re rooting me on in the most metaphorical of ways, but writers such as Lucien and me love metaphors. There are lots of them to describe everything around us, and what’s around me is truly magnificent and worthy of an abstract description.

Through all of his stubbornness, I have forgotten to remind myself that Lucien Carr is the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen in my entire life, and even though I’ve spent one of those years in a basement, I’ve seen a lot of beautiful people before then. No one can compare to the golden threads hugging his scalp and never desiring to let go because he’s so gorgeous. No one can compare to the raging sea in his daringly blue eyes. No one can compare to the berry of his lips, poised towards sophistication and gushing metaphysics. No one can compare to everything that he is, everything that he will be, everything that he means to me, but I don’t think he even comprehends how much he means to me, so why don’t I show him?

So it is with quivering hands that I extend them towards him, tenderly scooping his face in my palm and fucking the balance of the Ferris wheel, because my fear is higher in this moment than we are in elevation, but that’s all over when I lace our lips together without a protest from my faithful companion, and that is how we sit for as long as we can, just together in the rhythm of the sea, up and down, up and down, swirling the mixtures of glimmering pearls and aching tendrils of adoration pulling towards each other.

Cheering from the neighboring seats on the Ferris wheel engulfs our ears in victory, and I grin against Lucien’s lips to savor it, but he only tugs me closer, fists groping my plaid buttondown as if the disturbance will sever our connection, but I’m more worried for him than he is for me, as he could be as fleeting as this Ferris wheel ride, and I would hate to see that be so.

And because of that, I snare every opportunity to claw at my companion, at his hair, at his t-shirt that smells of the same citrus that clings to the walls of his apartment, at his beauty transferred to corporeal form, at every detail about him that I love to know, and I also know that now I have experienced living.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: BAE BAE BAE BAE got the BAE BAE BAE BAE
> 
> polylogism: the belief that people in different groups think in different ways
> 
> ~Dacanon


	26. Part Three

Part Three

_ Sweep up the sweat soaked rags of your labor and join the artistic rebellion, young soul. _

Chapters: 24 - 29

Song: You're a Man Now, Boy by Raleigh Ritchie


	27. why all these damn dishes in the sink

Certainly kissing the most brilliant person I’ve ever met on the apex of the Ferris wheel is overcoming some sort of fear, and whether that’s the fear of the ride or the fear of becoming intimate with him, I have no idea, but I at least know that it was truly magnificent, and I wish I could relive it, but unfortunately we’re back in the apartment that looks even dingier now that we’ve returned from something so beautiful at the carnival from last night, and Lucien has already left for yet another boring day of work at the library, where he doesn’t want to be but needs to be in order to sustain our residence at this house, however cluttered it may be.

His absence is a motive to think about him even more than usual, how the lights flickering in the background of the carnival also flickered in his ocean eyes, how having him here with me transformed the circus from something harrowing to something pleasurable, how he allowed me to overcome two fears of mine by replacing them with jovial memories of just _him_ and his everlasting grace, and ever since then, I cannot remove him from my mind.

On the contrary, maybe the visit of someone else will occupy my thoughts instead of Lucien Carr. Edie had texted me earlier this morning to say that she would be dropping by the apartment to chat with me and catch up on all that we’ve been doing, which is a lot in my case and probably not much in hers, unless Jack has done something wild again that landed her in some sort of emergency that has now been subdued enough for her to be telling me about it on her visit. I have no desire to clean up the place, as I’m both lazy and unsure that it will stay in its state of cleanliness for very long, primarily when Lucien arrives at the house after a prolonged work period of cataloguing things uselessly at the Paterson library, and although Edie is a very tidy person who will probably straighten things up during her minor vacation here, I’m not going to assist her, as she’ll clear enough things up in a matter of minutes while she pretends to be listening and not silently judging me for being so sordid.

So now we wait for Edie to knock on the door without daring to ever press the doorbell that she hates for some reason unknown to me, which is becoming increasingly strenuous when Lucien has warped me into a person of action who cannot wait for other people to propel their lives forward, more so than I was before, so it’s a blessing when I detect the rumbling noise of a fist upon the wooden aperture, signaling my motherly friend’s arrival.

Leaping from the chair in which I always sit since moving into the apartment, I make my way downstairs towards the door, then swinging it open widely to reveal the smiling face of Edie Parker, a wicker basket of fruit under a red checkered cloth and a bottle of sparkling lemonade in her hands, which she extends to me with the faith that I’ll be able to recognize what to do with them, but I soon understand faster than I would’ve thought, and I accept them and carry them upstairs as she follows me.

“Sorry about the mess,” I apologize, though I’m not really going to do anything about it, but there’s no doubt that she will.

“Oh, it’s fine,” Edie assures me, glancing all around the haggard apartment and trying to hide her disgust with my living style, even if most of this was imposed by Lucien, who is at the library right now and can’t absorb the blame, but being the kind person that she is, she redirects the blame to herself. “I suppose it was a bit of a short notice.”

I realize that her permission to be so sloppy is born out of fallacy to fabricate the politeness that she claims we all need in our lives, and I’m not going to argue it, but even if she gave me a week heads up about her visit, I still wouldn’t clean up, though I don’t tell her that, because she’d either apologize again for no logical reason besides civil obedience, or she would be internally annoyed that I must contradict everything with my socially inept behavior, but that’s just how I am, and he is aware of that, but she’s nevertheless critical of it, as if I can help being so fucking weird.

Once I’ve scaled the staircase with a slope grand enough to annihilate me, I stride to the kitchen to wash the fruit that Edie has probably already washed, but I need something to do, and so does she, so I direct her, “Make yourself at home.”

Edie frowns at the display of unfinished manuscripts and random forks stuck in the wall from Lucien’s target practice game when his store of ideas is out of stock in every item, and she lightly kicks a soda can away from her personal bubble as if it will consume her. “I can barely reach any furniture, Allen.”

I shrug, juggling with a bunch of grapes the color of Edie’s deep purple blouse and studying them like they’re an alien race while I answer the woman. “Yeah, well, you can blame Lucien for that.”

Edie, reserving a calm countenance meant to pry into my life easier, walks her hands across the arm of my favorite chair in the hopes of acquiring some information about my rowdy roommate. “Speaking of Lucien, are you sure he’s a suitable match for you?”

I halt my activity of washing the grapes, as they’re the only thing I’ll clean in this apartment, and I almost drop the bundle before regaining my grip on them but not on my stability. “What do you mean by ‘a suitable match’?”

I can comprehend that Edie doesn’t favor Lucien as much as I do, or really favor him at all, because as far as she knows, he’s a seductress whose power was too potent to resist, a seductress who pulled me into his trap of an apartment and injected me with impulsivity so that I’d abandon her and Jack without so much as a word to them about it, and I’m truly sorry about that, but it already transpired, and life is meant to be lived in the infinitely splitting second of the present, as the seductress would preach, but Edie is far from cognizant of this.

“You had only seen him about three times before he asked you to move in with you. Is that not unhealthy?”

Is this not her only argument? Yes, it is true, but it’s also overexposed. Okay, so I did move in with Lucien after only a few encounters with him, but life isn’t about planning. Life is about welcoming the danger addressing you with bared teeth and filing them down to stubs so that they can’t hurt you anymore, not mapping out every step on the road, because quite frankly, no human can predict those kinds of things, and that’s why spontaneity is so imperative to Lucien and me.

“We’re doing fine,” I mutter, resuming my activity of washing the grapes with part of my vision still sneakily pointed towards Edie like a dog guilty of a crime they’d prefer to hide from, a dog who also wishes to see what’s going on.

“Well okay then.”

Not satisfied by Edie’s last remark and assuming that there are undertones of sarcasm, as it is with her motherly personality, I continue with my spiel, which is not advised but flows to me out of a misplaced peevishness. “Why don’t you like him?”

“Look, Allen,” Edie starts, a sigh being regurgitated from her wearied lungs. “We’re not talking about this.”

“But you hate him, don’t you?”

Something I detest is when my friends hate my other friends, because I love them all, and most of the time I love them all _equally_ , so to see that they’re divided over something that I could overcome is a concerning notion, and it’s a notion that’s manifesting between Edie and Lucien. Lucien was somewhat sardonic on the phone with Edie a few days ago, but he most likely wasn’t sardonic enough to trigger the label of an aberration forced upon him by my mother of a friend, though he _did_ basically steal me from her, so part of Edie’s animosity towards him is justified, I suppose, but I’m nonetheless going to defend the person who has changed my life forever, because that’s too much of a distinction to ignore.

“I would actually like to invite you two to dinner tomorrow night at our house, so I’m not sure if that’s born out of a hate for your friend or not,” Edie negates sarcastically, silencing my fervid attacks.

I haven’t visited Jack and Edie’s house in a while, ever since I moved in with Lucien and have since been engrossed in the strangeness of his ordeals, and I hadn’t planned on returning to that house. It’s been nowhere near my mind, neither a desire to sojourn there nor a desire to stay away from there, just a past memory that sometimes flashes in my brain for a split second and then departs just as hastily, but to return to Jack and Edie’s house after being away for so long is a tad worrying, as I haven’t seen Jack in a while, and Edie is callous towards me because of that.

Hopefully I can mend my faulty ways and bring Lucien along to help me with that, so I nod my head and accept the offer.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Edie is my mom but now that I've been writing her I realise that she can actually be not so good
> 
> positivism: belief that scientific fact is the only knowledge
> 
> ~Dakotraining-in-karate


	28. swiper no motherfucking swiping

I feel that the lovely Edie Parker was a tad too angry with me for my foolish personality to ignore it to instead be the same sloth that I have been for over a week while Lucien has been relatively busy with his monotonous library work and his philosophical ramblings that he is helplessly urged to share with me as if I need to know yet another way how the world goes round, and Edie was never like this, rather a quiet and docile woman who should not be afflicted by my obvious laziness and inability to give a shit, though it’s not really that I don’t want to, more so that I can’t find it in my dulled sense of reality to do so, and because of that, I also feel that I need to repent for my mundane sins of neglecting the person who has fed me and clothed me and housed me for ten months before Lucien came along and presumably ruined everything in her perspective, even if I cannot pick apart why I did such a thing, as my rudeness would be unwarranted in any situation.

Being so lazy and inexperienced with life in the quadrant of plain things such as taking care of myself, I have no idea how I’ll repent for being so obstinate, because even after Lucien taught me that I must worry about myself first and foremost, I’ve been living off of cup noodles and coffee for seemingly forever, but Edie Parker isn’t a woman to appreciate those items. She may smile and nod, but that’s only out of her unwavering politeness towards people who perhaps do not deserve it at all, and no one actually enjoys cup noodles and coffee. Those are for college students frenzied by their first (and definitely not their last) existential crisis.

But food is a sound way to go when you’ve been invited to the dinner party of someone to whom you will repent, and both cup noodles and coffee are food items, though not delectable ones to any normal person like Jack and Edie, so I must revise my route to something less complicated than I can endure, something like chocolate chip cookies.

There’s no way in hell Lucien has the ingredients to bake cookies, and he’s too engrossed in his sea of sleep for me to wake him to ask, in addition to the fact that he would somehow slap me with a pillow or the stronger weapon of his hand through his rest, so I pilfer the cupboards to locate at least one ingredient. I find flour, but that’s it, as Lucien doesn’t eat much, and when he does, it’s almost always the same gross foods I do, the rotten cup noodles and bitter coffee that the hosts of the dinner party would reject, but I’d rather remove those monstrosities from my mind while I’m supposed to be baking delicious food, not the edible aesthetic of a crying blogger, but I might be surfing dangerously close to that, for the other ingredients are nowhere to be seen.

I root through another cabinet unsuccessfully, but then the option of the refrigerator pops into my mind, where at least eggs would be, though, swinging the door open rapidly to speed up the process of my hectic baking, I instead discover a bucket of cookie dough that’s been pre-made for lazy folks like me who just need a quick and easy escape from the demeaning stares of my friends. It’s perfect for the occasion, because Jack and Edie will think that they’re amazing and that I baked them myself, which is only partially true, and Lucien won’t know either, unless he notices the lack of cookie dough forming a crater in the tub which I will methodically place back in his refrigerator when I’m finished with it so that his suspicions will be slightly hindered, and the cookies are so facile to bake in the hurry of inexperience, so that’s the route I choose, procuring the tub of cookie dough from the refrigerator and slapping it upon the kitchen table to bake.

With my weak pool of muscle, it’s a strenuous trial to unlatch the plastic lid from the equally as plastic tub, but by lifting the material up a bit each centimeter and working my way around the circle, I eventually peel the lid away from its body to reveal a pristine expanse of tan and brown that will soon ferment in the chambers of the oven into something for which Jack and Edie will not shame me like they would have shamed me for cup noodles and coffee, which I suppose is worthy of shame to people who aren’t a metaphysical mess like me, but I’m still proud of this step up from them.

There are no ice cream scoops suitable for cookie dough in any of Lucien’s cluttered drawers, so I settle for a regular sized spoon, the only utensil he has left in the case and not in his cramped dishwasher which he should really clean out by now. Scooping out piles of cookie dough is an arduous task when I have no muscle and am only equipped with a meager dining spoon, but by some luck I am able to serve twelve balls of cookies over a span of two trays, and my strain is halted.

This is when Lucien waltzes into the room, somehow unaffected by the grogginess of recent sleep and rather jovial and skipping around the apartment in search for some coffee to boost his conviviality, which is probably a bit destructive if you ask me, and he immediately imbibes the sight of me baking cookies that are not for him, but I don’t suppose he understands that, as he snags a ball of cookie dough from the tub and spins away while nibbling on it like he did no wrong.

“Hey!” I protest, moving from my spot at the kitchen table to arrest Lucien. “The cookies are for Jack and Edie!”

I’m in enough trouble with them already, after moving out of their house without so much as a note left upon their dining table or something and then being met with the motherly wrath of Edie Parker, but if Lucien steals all of the cookie dough, then we’re back to square one, because if I burn the cookies in the oven with my inability to cook for shit, lots of the cookie dough will have vanished with Lucien’s appetite for sweets but not for regular food, and he’ll have indirectly thrown me under the bus, though I’ll admit that most of this is my own goddamn fault.

“Why?” Lucien riots against me, calmly licking the excess cookie dough off of his fingers in that seductive manner in which he performs everything, which is certainly gripping but is unnecessary and obnoxious in this moment. “Did you decide you need to repent?”

How does he know everything in a matter of seconds? I told him nothing, not even that we’re going to Jack and Edie’s house at six o’clock tonight, which I would have informed him of if he hadn’t stolen the cookie dough before I could open my mouth to do so, but he’s already on my trail with a striking speed that I should have predicted from him but didn’t, as I was so avid about not being hated by the people who have done nothing but love me before I betrayed their seemingly everlasting trust, and I’m truly sorry for that, so baking cookies is the only thing I see fit to do in these circumstances that I can’t really comprehend all that well, but Lucien continues to rob me of the materials to repent, and I’ll chase him for it if he ever tries it again.

And he does, extending his hand forward to flick another ball of cookie dough into his hand, then proceeding to bite off tiny chunks of it at a time as if he’s doing nothing, which he is, and that’s pillaging my stores of communion to fuel his insatiable sweet tooth that I will soon shut down.

“Lucien Carr, come back here!” I order, running across the apartment as he flees from my conviction just as hastily as I can sprint along with him, and he’s fucking laughing, that devil of a man with stolen possessions stuck to his slender fingers like they will forever be his, and all I can do is follow his convoluted routes around the house, weaving in and out of his haggard furniture and the piles of shit that he’s amassed over the months in this wreck of a place, and my lungs begin to flame with the intensity of the sun boring through their membranes, but I must continue until Lucien surrenders.

And soon he does, though not in the way I would expect. All of the sudden, my companion whips around with that same arrogant smirk he always has, winds my shirt to a ball in his cookie dough stricken hands, and shoves me towards him until our lips are tailored together like a puzzle of the ghastly universe finally joining together into a whole and funneling its potency towards our interlocked cushions of scarlet, and Lucien never releases me. This may be a ploy to make me forget about his robbery of the cookie dough, and it may be working, but all I know is that I love this touch, and this is more of a home than Jack and Edie’s house ever was.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: of course here we go with the cliche baking thing but it's gay so whatever
> 
> rationalism: the theory that human reason is the source of knowledge
> 
> ~Dakotoreo


	29. where's the butterscotch, granny

Lucien was utterly opposed to the idea of visiting Jack and Edie for a dinner party, despite talking to Edie on the phone and thinking highly of her, once labeling her as a nice woman, though that may have been sarcastic, but even then, they experienced a few seconds of interaction before he hung up to avoid speaking longer, so he doesn’t know the slightest detail about her, yet he’s still whining like a child to remain at home, but I forced him to prepare himself for amending all that is amiss among the residents of this relationship cesspool, and he’s still as frustrated as that child, though I’m not backing down. I baked cookies for the first time since I was fourteen years old, and they were somewhat fruitful, so I’m here to present my rewards to a woman who deserves all of the rewards in the world.

I don’t presume all has gone awry for this Lucien Carr character, as there’s no doubt in saying that Lucien looks fucking amazing in the only suit he owns and barely ever wears, but there’s also no doubt in saying that by seven o’clock he will have taken off his tie and his jacket and unbuttoned at least two of his buttons to flaunt a small part of his chest like a distraught artist sickened by the fading world as they lie on their velvet sofa being fed grapes by servants, and there’s yet again no doubt that he’ll never apologize for his intrusive actions to instead whine about how the suit is bothering him when I order him to clothe himself again, and from the doorstep to Jack Kerouac and Edie Parker’s house, he’s already adjusting his tie to loosen it slightly in the faith that I won’t notice the genesis of his ordeal to strip the thin garment completely. I’m not going to argue with him, however, because we’ve already argued enough over pointless things like a expanding my audience on my blog, and I’m not about to argue over a fucking necktie, in addition to the fact that this is right before a dinner party where arguing isn’t so courteous to the fellow guests and especially the hosts, though this time we only have the hosts, and they’d probably ban us from ever conversing with them again, so I just ignore the fool of a man.

Ringing the doorbell and therefore neglecting Edie’s hatred of it, I pray that she won’t be upset with us for both bringing Lucien in his perpetually haggard state and for disobeying her only nitpicky rule of conduct, but when she swings the door open and halts the echoes of the shrillness from the bell, her face is anything but demeaning, rather kissed by a smile and bright red lipstick typical of a model, and she’s equally as gorgeous, which I share with her so that I will no longer be on her bad side and in danger of being kicked out of the house before dinner has even begun, though that wouldn’t disrupt anything, as Edie has most likely gushed about how much of an insolent child I am to Jack at her dinner that hasn’t been so mandatory now that I’ve moved out of her house and landed myself in a position of ill repute, and my plan has succeeded, for Edie is now ushering us into her brightly decorated living room without besmirching us with her classic expressions bathing in silence to uphold her politeness in one terrain.

Jack is reading the daily newspaper to pass the time while he waits for us to enter the house, and now that we have, Edie clears her throat to signal our arrival, and he glances from the article on politics in the Middle East, surprised that we’re here so soon, though we arrived a bit later than Edie would have liked us to arrive with her methodical planning skills, but I can attribute this surprise to his inability to know what the hell is going on at any point of his dreary banking career, so now that I’ve mentioned that, Jack wasn’t the one who was astonished at my departure to live with Lucien, just Edie, because even though I wallow in my basement every day of the week, she somehow notices everything and keeps thorough tabs on the nonexistent.

“Jack, honey, are you ready for dinner?” Edie asks in the sweetest voice she can muster, but after living with her for almost a year, both Jack and I can detect that she’s a bit annoyed by her husband’s disorganized state, but Lucien is completely unaware of that; it just shows how familiarity can warp someone’s perception, a neat little trick.

In fact, Jack and I have picked up on minor nuances in Edie’s behavior based on her fluctuating emotions. When she’s being passive aggressive, she’ll speak to people like she just did. When she’s full blown angry, she will explode over the tiniest thing as a means to release her acerbity that’s been building up inside of her for a while, too long of a while for it to be healthy, so that’s why it manifests as a corporeal reincarnation of the underworld. When she’s gloomy, she rarely speaks to anyone, even those who make a grand effort to speak to _her_ , and that’s just how she prefers to be in order to cope with the depressions in her morale, and Jack understands this, seeming the _only_ the understands, but that’s okay in this situation, as it’s what’s required of him in Edie’s current passive aggressive temperament, so Jack rises from the couch and from his intriguing read about things that don’t affect him, following Edie to the dining table and accepting my tray of cookies with a thankful nod along the route.

“So, Lucien,” Edie begins to engage in small talk with someone she doesn’t know despises small talk, as that’s just the kind of person that she is and has always been and will always be. “What do you do for a living?”

A sense of pride exfoliates Lucien’s already beautiful skin, and with a boyish smile he states, “I’m a writer.”

I locate a dash of disappointment upon Edie’s visage as she tweaks the placement of a few of the forks and spoons so that they don’t clash with the ceramic plate, and I suppose in all honesty that her disappointment is justified, because with most writers, they’re a failure for their entire career, and even if they do become lucrative, they might squander it on the impulse from freedom gained after years of hell, but the abrupt sluggishness of the woman’s movement implies that she’s going to ask the winning question soon, and as I predicted, she does.“Does that pay well?”

Through Lucien’s impenetrable gaucherie, he is able to decrypt the subtle misconceptions about what he does to pass the time, naming a hobby rather than a job when Edie inquired, and he finds it in himself to clarify. “I work at the library for money, but my philosophy is that the purest sort of money is the knowledge imbibed by the soul.”

We’ve been at Jack and Edie’s house for less than three minutes, and Lucien has already whipped out a process of his philosophical gears. Why can’t he wait for a meal over candlelight to impress the hosts? If he barges into the cognition of my friends so brashly, then they’ll surely think, but will they be supportive of his ideas, and will they receive the wrong impression of him? Mostly I’m just tired of him placing these rants in every conversation, but I’ll admit that they are quite ingenuitive, and I’d actually detest if he stopped spewing them out of his cherry lips, so for now, all I can do is roll my eyes and pretend like I’m not totally in love with my best friend.

And despite my claims distorted by the pique towards Lucien’s obnoxiousness, Jack and Edie have followed the route that I had predicted that they would follow, one of confusion and a faulty first impression of my companion. There’s always time to clear this up, of course, but I don’t suppose Lucien will make it any better on his own, so I’ll task myself with sweeping up the fragments of glass he shatters simply by existing in the den of diplomacy. I’ve become like the mother figure to him as Edie was to me before I moved into his dingy apartment and organized his clutter a bit like a mother would, and this is just one of my duties, whether I like it or not, because I sure as hell don’t want Edie cornering me with a request to help her serve the dessert of my store bought cookie dough transcending to splendor, just to have her spit in my face about how I should return to the basement and how Lucien is a bad influence on me and how this relationship is unhealthy, and maybe she’s right, but I’ve spent so long trapped inside of arbitrary confines, and I’m not about to greet them again.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: must lucien be so pretentious
> 
> scientism: science is superior to other sources of knowledge
> 
> ~Dakotaffy


	30. fling me into the sun

Overall, we had a great time at Jack and Edie’s house, besides the occasional nuance in their disposition towards each other, but that’s to be expected from dinner parties, events meant to draw people together or divide them as if there’s a valley of lava between two guests, but thankfully we did not part so thoroughly, and I think it’s safe to say that Lucien, Edie, Jack, and I are all on good terms after that meal.

It’s also safe to say that Edie won’t be knocking on my door (not ringing the doorbell, of course) at any point in the future, unless it’s to deposit kind hearted gifts and not use them as a way to investigate what I’ve been doing in my new life of metaphysics and falling in love with a fucking librarian, which is beneficial to my raging paranoia who always assumes that people are out to get me and nothing else, but it will be quieted at least a bit by the slack Edie will provide me with after her dinner party, and I will no longer have to worry about cleaning up the apartment for her arrival, allowing it to grow as messy as it needs before it snaps at the borders of a trail to the necessary places like the kitchen or the bedroom or the front door.

So I really think that we gained some benefits by showing up at Jack and Edie’s dinner party, whether Lucien can see that or not, and I am so glad that I was able to go without putting up a fight as my companion did in sometimes the subtlest of fashion so as to replicate the politeness of the hosts almost in his trademarked satirical way, and though there’s no fruit to be harvested from returning to Jack and Edie’s home for another dinner party, their first one was perfect for rebuilding our friendship, and I hope that it will stay like that, in the trees of sweet harmony.

However, Lucien Carr is a man to complain about almost everything, despite professing his love for the universe on a daily basis, and this time his complaint is that the politeness of Jack and Edie’s house is clogging up his senses, and returning to a slightly less stuffy place won’t help at all, because it’s still a confined area where nothing can escape, and I really have no idea what he means by any of this, but he has suggested visiting the park, so if that works for him, than I’m all for it, I guess.

The nature is extremely pleasant as well, with the birds still flitting around the park like they’re greeting every guest who stops by, even in the sharp wintertime of Paterson, New Jersey and rather all of New England, the patrons strolling along without a care in the world, those worries having been put off until they reach their home again and slump to the door in realization like Lucien and I eventually will, the crunch of crimson and vermilion and canary leaves dried by the fine china of a November chill under our sneakered feet, the weave of our fingers together as they swing through the density of winter with smiles digested by our reddened faces, and whether that’s from the sharp air or from the embarrassment of being so close to one another, I have no idea, but it’s lovely to be in this environment nevertheless.

I have noticed throughout our friendship that Lucien is absolutely convivial when he’s outside at a time when he chooses to be outside. For example, when we walked to the library to find a book for an article whose topic I didn’t know but was about to discover, Lucien was twirling across the sidewalk and giggling like the little kid that he is. The location of his travels wasn’t all that pleasant, a place where monotony strides through the walls upon walls of knowledge in paper form without a single riot against it, yet Lucien was terribly jovial when he was venturing there. As people preach in their car commercials in order to sound inspirational, it’s not the destination but the journey along the way that matters the most, which is only true for humans who believe that one option is absolute and the other option is inherently inferior to the alternate, but Lucien strives to be apart from the masses of humans, so he of course enjoys both the journey and the destination, absorbing it all as they come to him and as they wind through the pristinely golden threads upon his head like they’re meant to be there, and Lucien views them as such.

A sigh traipses out of Lucien’s lungs, huffed out by an over exaggerated shrugging of the shoulders, and as he spins around once along the sidewalk, he marvels, “Isn’t the world just so enchanting?”

Lucien Carr is one of the most confusing people I’ve ever met, and sometimes that’s not a unique trait that we all ponder in awe, rather a trait that twists our minds into bewilderment. When he’s in nature, he claims that the world is the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen, because it is _everything_ all at once. In his writing, he claims that the world is the root of all evil towards the troubled and towards those who have questioned the film of ignorance placed upon their peers’ hoods, though the world may be a less controversial term for the snatches of society. Both are somehow true, and both contribute to the labyrinthine character of my companion, and both are so freaking strange.

But Lucien isn’t a man to leave me alone if I don’t answer a question that I can’t, always pestering me to find a way to dig up the correct information to solve the equation, but I’ve found through a week of living with him that he can be easily deflected by a short comment of agreement every now and then, so that’s what I offer, though a bit sarcastically, I must confess. “Just lovely.”

“Don’t be so sardonic, Allen,” Lucien jests, only providing me with a second of attention before he adjusts his vision on the more extraordinary parts of the world, as in far from me, although he’s probably blinded by how much more extraordinary I am than those other parts of the world, obviously.

“I’ll be as sardonic as I please until you stop being so pretentious.”

Yet another sigh somersaults out of his lungs, but on this occasion, he’s mocking the kind of strife located on velvet chairs and opulence. “Then we’ll be here for a while.”

We’ll be here for a while no matter what, because once you engage Lucien in something he enjoys, he won’t split from it until someone practically drags him from it, but even then he’ll put up a formidable fight that makes one question whether or not they really should’ve opposed him, so when you think about it, I can do whatever I wish, and we’ll still be in this godforsaken park forever, as Lucien is the complete opposite of a wine paired with compliance, and we’ll only depart when he turns to my wearied self, limbs strewn across a park bench as he dances in front of my slouching form, and claims that the park is now boring after multiple hours of dwelling here, when it became boring within the first half hour.

“Good thing there are facilities for you,” Lucien adds, referencing something that I am not cognizant of until I finally see a horrid sight that I’m offended he even mentioned.

Once I glance at the row of portable toilets stacked against a black wire fence by the sidewalk and the other buildings, which is a terrible location for them, anyone must admit, the urge to utilize them is overwhelming, having gone directly to bed after returning from Jack and Edie’s dinner party. I have always detested portable toilets for being so dirty and for never demanding the hygienic attention it deserves, but they’re somewhat of a safe haven when you’re exploding.

I nudge my companion, who is deeply invested in the allure of nature and is difficult to wake, but when he finally snaps to his senses, I murmur, “Hey, Lucien, I need to go to the bathroom.”

Muscling a brow up his forehead, Lucien points to the dingy line of portable toilets in disgust. “In one of those things?”

I roll my eyes and glue my hands to my hips impatiently, comprehending that portable toilets are both a reluctant blessing and an ineluctable scourge upon this earth but requiring them anyway. “Yeah, well it’s the only option, so I’m stuck with it.”

“All right,” Lucien shrugs, assembling his hands in the air as a gesticular defense. “Have fun or something.”

The idea of fun is far from the portable toilets’ goals, so I nudge him once more to shove that into my companion’s limited cognition, this time more forcefully than before, and stalk off towards the sordid lineup of mundane torture chambers while Lucien settles on the nearest bench to wait for me, which I appreciate more than anyone else would, because I understand that he’d rather continue walking and exploring all that nature has to offer, but I presume he didn’t sit down for me, rather for the opportunity to glimpse one scene meticulously.

And that’s all going well for the magnificent Lucien Carr, as life mostly is when he separates his mind from the hell that he’s created to better understand how the world functions, except there’s a shift in the atmosphere, a shift that only he can detect but a shift that is enormous nevertheless, and all of the sudden there’s a person in front of him that he hasn’t seen for years, and all of the sudden he’s drowning.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I usually never use cliffhangers because this is all shit anyway but here you go
> 
> secularism: church and state should be different
> 
> ~Dakotainted


	31. Part Four

Part Four

_Dive into the sewer and emerge as a better writer._

Song: Numbers by Daughter


	32. it's okay I'm clingy too

Tripping down the stairs is an odd sort of experience, but it’s an experience where you’re aware of every little jolt of your back upon the wooden shelves of the decline, and then when you’re at the bottom of the stairs, you’ve tuckered out and weary, with your limbs burning with damage and your breath shaky with an apprehension of it happening again, even at the lowest point you could reach.

In life, it is the same way. You plummet from the zenith of your career to the bottom of your career in intervals equal enough to count. You can sense every bump upon your existence, every notch tucked into your spine and carved by the sharp ledge of the staircase, every level you decrease as your life tumbles downhill and so do you. You can sense it all.

So if the seemingly stable Lucien Carr were to ever ask someone to push him down the stairs, that would be more of a blessing than rolling down a ramp into a bush of blades whose roses are stained scarlet with his blood, and he supposes it would be less painful, because at least he would still retain his ability to understand where he is falling and how far he is from the bottom. Upholding cognition is all he needs. He can’t lose his mind when it’s the thing he’s the most proud of, and the staircase is the perfect weapon for that.

But now Lucien is finding himself somersaulting from one stair to the other, a lower one upon the terrain of security and decreasing security, all because a man whom he hasn’t seen in a few years has waltzed back into his life in a place that is open to the public but not open to harassment by a ghost of a person, a ghost that Lucien swore he would never encounter again, a person that should’ve accepted that promise, a person that should comply, even if his old friend wound up in the same park as him, because that’s how promises operate. They shouldn’t be shattered in the dangerous impulsivity of excitement, and this man shouldn’t be here.

However, he _is_ here, and he’s very clear in Lucien’s line of sight, clear also in the notion that he is not leaving for anything that Lucien says to him, no matter how pleading, because what kind of regular human would abandon their old friend once more after just seeing them again? No one, but Lucien Carr shuns regular humans with all that he has, though they’re still planted in his way like a sidewalk to a reckless driver, and this man is one of them.

Now, most people would think that your friend from when you were sixteen resurfacing at the ripe age of twenty-four would be a blessing upon your life of post-college existential crises, but to Lucien Carr, it is far from that, rather a blight upon his functioning, functioning that is supposed to be chugging along perfectly but is now wrecked by a faulty railroad pin who was run over only in the past and is being run over again right now, screeching metal against metal and anxiety against elation, Lucien Carr against David Kammerer, first and foremost the bane of his dreary old existence.

And now this David character is expecting Lucien to be sympathetic towards him, narrating a tale of love lost by the tumultuous sea of life, but Lucien knows that he’s just like the rest of the boring humans, people that he loathes with every inch of his working fingers who draft his concern (and, admittedly, his umbrage) towards them in the parchment those boring humans will actually listen to, and David Kammerer sure loved to listen, though conveniently he never listened at the right times. He never listened to Lucien when he told him that this relationship between them was reckless and needed to be purged. He never listened to the premonitions in his dense skull of his that informed him that what he was doing was degrading. He never listened to himself when bits of his rage broke free of his shell and spun lies as clothing for those he should’ve protected.

David was never a person to confess to things, either. He never chose to confess that he is a monster and will remain to be a monster. He never chose to confess that he didn’t want to leave Lucien when that’s all that he wanted. He never chose to confess that he ruined the young life of Lucien Carr, and for what? Belt scars and booze. That’s all.

When someone says, “I hate the things you do to me,” we humans romanticize it, even when we shouldn’t. We romanticize everything, it seems, everything that should be left to the underworld. We bathe in the assumptions of a happily ever after as if that’s what victims are shouting about when they _can_ finally shout. Romance doesn’t steal a voice from its parties, as if a scar imposed by the belt from a person you should’ve been able to trust doesn’t last as long as the fragment of someone else’s kind soul instead of their acrimonious soul, as if memorizing the step of someone you despise is less important than memorizing the step of someone you’re excited to see, as if shivering at someone’s name is not because they’re the monster of your life but the light of it whose energy sparks you time and time again. That is not reality. That is erasure.

And though David Kammerer was an abuser and an alcoholic and probably still is, performing all of those traits as he struggles to understand what he’s doing wrong, he has no idea that he was a curse upon Lucien’s life, Lucien’s young life of sixteen fucking years old, an age where no one should be plagued by a man who is out for destruction with the inability to repent for their crimes, because they simply don’t understand them, and that’s perhaps the worst fate for a victim.

And now that lack of understanding has traveled with the twenty-four year-old David Kammerer all the way to the park where his beloved Lucien Carr sits on a bench, unsuspecting until a few moments ago and now simmering with antipathy in the form of memories and hostility derived from them, and David Kammerer has also never been able to understand where to stop, so here he is, trying to talk to the person who despises him with every aching in his chest and every belt scar on his back and every trauma shaking in his fingers as they gasp for parchment, and the worst part is that David looks sorry for what he did, for a crime that is irreparable, for nothing that Lucien will accept, but David won’t back down.

“Lucien?” David investigates, checking to see if he left an indelible mark on someone that never asked for it, zooming in on the helpless man resting upon the bench, scooting towards him with no regard for personal space, reaching out his hand to see if this is all just a dream.

Lucien slaps David’s hand away, a scowl his tacit venom, and David shelters his pain while attempting to deflect more, because now Lucien is heated and attacking from all sides, and he has got some important things to say. “Why the hell are you here, David?”

Lucien has sunk a cannon into David’s morale, though it’s nothing that David shouldn’t have expected. He just showed up randomly in the sight of someone who hates him, assuming that he’d be delivered well, but that is not the case, and he needs to repair his claims, and it is with a quivering anxiety and a quiet voice that David replies, “I just saw you and thought I should say hello.”

“The only thing you should be saying is a prayer.” Lucien leans in, churning the alabaster of his teeth like water churns in his ocean eyes, as striking as one could ever see him. “Or goodbye.”

“Lucien, this wasn’t how we were before,” David pleads, heaving his shoulders as if a coil of line over the edge of a ship, where David’s life is plunging ever since this conversation began.

“And I’m glad for that! I have a friend now, an apartment, a hobby in which I can do whatever the hell I please.”

David clips two hands to his hips, rocking back on one hip and bobbing a foot up and down with impatience. “And what would that hobby be?”

Lucien ducks his head to his lap, planning something that David is unaware of, and it is with a devious smile and an arrogantly swishing jaw that the man carries out his answer: “Writing.”

A sickening pallor purgatories David’s face, and his movement ceases to instead fall subordinate to the shock of what his old friend has disclosed with him. “Writing?” David whispers, disbelieving and frankly somewhat scared.

“Writing,” Lucien repeats, allowing it to flick off of his tongue as he realizes that he’s won. “Yeah, that’s right. I finally have a place to channel my thoughts, a place that isn’t _you_.” Lucien’s eyes are hard, frozen over by the wintertime, but they are steady, and they are convicting. “I don’t need you anymore, David, so you might as well be gone.”

Lucien has defeated his demons, and the blank sheet of sin is still upon the perpetrator.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: David is a cunt and we're all dead
> 
> I was househunting with my parents and I don't want to move so I was just thinking "push me down the stairs" and then came up with that metaphor at the beginning so that just proves that I am not a good writer, rather a hermit caught in existential pain
> 
> ~Dakotripping


	33. is lucien the vodka aunt now

Nature is no longer charming for Lucien Carr, a man who used to enjoy it, at least not now anyway, because yes, nature is where the beauty hangs out in every aspect of the greens and the blues and the whistles of the wind, but nature is also where Lucien went to relax and instead was met by someone he hadn't seen in eight years, someone who abused him, someone who seared belt scars into his back because that's apparently how you experience more flavors of the world, someone who left traces that can never be forgotten in a lifetime, someone who ruined everything that Lucien had planned for his future by simply existing in the same space as him, and Lucien has barely been able to recover.

In fact, you never really can recover all the way. You can only suppress the urges and the feelings and the tears so that no one will suspect that you were once the bitch of someone who hated dogs, that you spent so many nights with wet pillows from the industrial factories of your own eyes that will never stop producing their goods, that you are not okay in the slightest but people will always expect you to be, and that's what Lucien is doing. His limited group of friends never would've known that he is crumbling on the inside, because he's done such a skilled job of hiding that notion from the people who would try and pick him apart to solve it when all they would do is leave fragmented windows strewn across the halls of Lucien's mind.

Lucien had thought he would be alone, but I decide it is a perfect time to investigate why my companion has been sitting out on the front steps for over an hour, barely doing anything from what I could see from the window, and maybe he's lonely, and lonely people need temporary boosts in their mood, because though I cannot fix his loneliness on the spot, I can subdue it like he's subduing his worries in the alcohol bottle gripped in his hands lapsing to ivory with the intensity of his clasp on it.

The screen to the front door clangs against its frame as I exit, but Lucien doesn't have to turn around to know that it's me, because quite frankly, if he's in this state, he'd probably rather see as little of me as possible, and that's okay, for I can deal with that. His safety is mine to uphold, and I can keep him safe by chatting with him about why he is most likely inebriated in a place where my neighbors can see him and call the Homeowner's Association to evict him, but most of our neighbors are sleeping at four o'clock in the afternoon due to their unbelievable oldness, so none of them are really here to witness this breakdown, which means that I can wrap my arm around my friend and comfort him with a brief "Lucien, are you all right?"

That is the most cliche thing I could ever say to anyone, the most useless thing, but it's already out of my faulty throat clogged by phlegm and the nervousness that spawned it, and it's the only phrase I can muster for the troubling situation, because I am clueless about this all, and it's obvious that Lucien won't disclose any helpful information to me, so I am left with the stock sentences that I've always abhorred, and they're my only choice.

But, of course, Lucien doesn't comprehend that, because he's drunk, and he's in pain, and he abhors those stock sentences almost as much as I do, so he only offers me a glare and a swig of whiskey down his throat as he refrains from moving anywhere besides my trembling vision. "Do I look like I'm all right?"

In all honesty, he looks like hell, and not the kind of hell writers enjoy writing about. Every features that I adore has now been dulled to the perverse enchantment of melancholy. His ocean eyes are in the midst of a great storm who throws all of the sailors off of their decks before snapping the boat in half like it's a larger model of a twig. His golden hair has been matted flat to his head without any of its signature shine or its classic style, just an amorphous mess of relationships among the strands. His berry lips now quake with each word he wrestles to spew out because he has to, not because he wants to say anything, but this is for me, and I appreciate it dearly, even if he's in this terrible pool of despair currently.

"No, you don't look like you're all right, but do you want to tell me about why that is?" I know he'll never agree to this with his secretive personality and acerbity towards those who only care for him, but it's worth trying.

Jaw swaying to the other side, Lucien's head slants away from me, clutching his bottle of whiskey tighter to him. "You couldn't help."

I offer all that I can, and though Lucien won't ever permit them to be in his sight, I still offer them. "I could help emotionally, at least," I propose, shrugging desperately as if he'll slip away if I can't give him something, which he might.

"Stop barging into places with clear warning signs, Allen."

My arms rocket towards the sky as blue as my companion's ocean eyes, eyes that have now worn down with the obstruction of pointed rocks, and I'm hoping to restore them to their buoyant state, but Lucien isn't allowing me to do so. "But you're here to tell a story, not deceive those who care about you!"

All Lucien has done is deceive me by pretending that he's okay when that's the farthest concept from the truth. Lucien is not okay, has never been okay, and will never be okay if he doesn't share with me what brought him to this perpetual underworld. He should not be able to smolder alone, especially not when the ambulance of a person is so close to him, not even a tantalizing deity to a mind deprived of splendor, but he is so estranged that he can't even realize that people are here for him, people like Jack and Edie who don't know him all that well, too. There are no benefits of isolation, and for the longest time I thought there were, but this level of isolation is reckless, and not in the way typical of Lucien Carr, rather in the way that lands people in hospitals and in debt that they can't pay off and in a deeper level of their personal hell.

"I hope that _one day_ the number of stories I tell will surpass the number of lies I tell, but as you can see, today is not that day." A swig of whiskey luges down Lucien's throat, unapologetic and as intoxicating as his crystal eyes. "Tomorrow doesn't look very promising, either."

Well not with that attitude. Part of me wishes to reprimand him for being so lacking in prospect, but the other part latched onto a sliver of faith in his sentence. He used the phrase "one day", which means that he will live to see multiple sets of twenty-four hours. He could be alive for longer than now, longer than I would've thought it would take to crumble completely, and even if he's wrong about this, if he's dead tomorrow morning with a smirk hounding his blueberry lips, his current ignorance is a blessing.

"Don't be an irrational suburban mom who won't vaccinate their children, Lucien. Do not allow your spite to poison those who only want to help you."

"The only irrational one is you, Allen." He tows a shaking hand through his lifeless hair, acknowledging the doom that he could easily prevent if he would just grant me access to a bit of information about him, and he's a fragile man now because of it, so fragile that under his breath I can barely hear him say, "You can't help me."

"I'd rather try to help you than throw you to the wolves immediately."

"Let me at the wolves," Lucien commands me, though I'll do nothing of the sort, and he knows this, even if he doesn't know anything else, so he elaborates to convince me to do something that I'll still never do. "They're gentler than humans."

He has a point, though I hate to admit it, but arguing is pointless when he's knocked by whiskey and shaken up like a soda can into a haze, so I decide to continue this conversation when he's not in a stupor of emotion, and I force myself to concur with him so that he'll leave the debate alone for a while. "Well I suppose you're right."

And I now recognize that I am not like Lucien, no matter how hard I once endeavored to be. I do not like to tell lies.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: why baes always fighting???,,gotdam
> 
> anarchism: being opposed to the government
> 
> ~Dakotrash


	34. we're all fucked

Everyone knows that writers aren’t okay, have never been okay, and will never be okay, because that’s just how their minds work to produce the beauty with which they are unfamiliar due to their extensive life in hell. They document their dreams with a film of nostalgia slid over the top, a bittersweet distortion to a land where anything is possible yet everything is dark in the subtlest of manners, and that’s a writer’s innate job, bestowed upon them by the gentle and generous hands of talent, and Lucien Carr is a writer like that.

I have seen his philosophical spiels that are meant to enlighten but rather run down a gloomier road, and that’s part of being a writer. I know that. However, I have never seen him so blatantly in shambles, not like he was on the front steps of his apartment, a dwindling bottle of whiskey strapped in fingers that could barely hold it. That is not the Lucien Carr I know, and quite frankly, I’m terrified to know him and where he originated from, because I might already have inferred the answer, and it declares that Lucien has always stored these tendrils of dread in his heart that pumps with passion for both good and evil, and those tendrils of dread have only poked out occasionally, not manifested in the full form of a broken man sweating on the porch of a place that is supposed to protect him but couldn’t restrain the ash of his soul as well as it needed to.

And really I have no one to talk to about this, because Lucien is both the victim and the perpetrator, and Jack doesn’t give a shit about anything except for banking and the daily newspaper, and Edie has never trusted Lucien and will probably just exclaim that she was correct all along and that Lucien is a bad influence on me and that she knew it would come to this, but Edie Parker is my only hope in this situation, so I’ll go to her, no matter how reluctant I am about it. My selfish anxiety isn’t going to prohibit my will to receive help for my best friend.

Lucien is already at the library, which is rather surprising, considering he was chugging whiskey last night and could barely stand up straight and is most likely now in a wretched hangover that his manager will punish him vigorously for, but at least he’s not here with his cunning ears to ask me why I’m sneaking out of the house so secretively and why I haven’t told him about this, and eventually he would figure it out with his sharp perceptive skills, but he’s thankfully at work and being granted a proper scolding from his manager, because in all honesty it’s not professional to be drunk on the job. Edie, on the other hand, is in her home like always, which is a blessing for me, as I won’t have to track her down throughout the winding city of Paterson, New Jersey just to inform her that my screw up of a friend has screwed up even more, so everything is set for my mission, and I can visit Jack and Edie’s house safely.

The walk to Jack and Edie’s cozy little cottage in the suburbs of Paterson is a strenuous one, despite the apparent niceness of their neighborhood, and it’s not that the neighborhood isn’t nice. It’s just that there is a lot of weight on my shoulders, weight that I cannot handle, weight that I didn’t know would be imposed upon me, weight that I cannot ignore no matter how hard I try, because this weight is indelible, but this weight is not mine. It belongs to Lucien Carr, whose troubles have manifested in more weight upon his friends while never scooping some of itself up to deposit to others, only multiplying at an alarming rate and spooking those who thought he was okay.

There’s no denying that Lucien is an elusive person, and that was generally okay until now. I could deal with being surprised at six o’clock in the morning with a jolting shake of the limbs from a man hovering behind me as I drank the coffee then spilled by the action of my friend. I could deal with a lack of answers as to what the hell it was that he was doing, because it all added to the spontaneity and the wonder of his enchanting performance. I could deal with not understanding what was whirring in that amazing head of his, as no one ever could anyway, and that was an accepted fact. What I can’t deal with, however, is Lucien’s suppressed emotions that have finally tumbled free after years of sinking them in more and more trauma, corpulent from affliction and near the point of bursting, and it is my faith that Edie can help me cleanse him of those demons before it’s too late, before I lose my only friend, before the shambles in which Lucien has been held turn to shambles themselves.

Eventually, throughout the strips of concrete and rocks and fallen leaves the color of blood spilled from trembling wrists, the color of rust rubbed in between unsuspecting and observant fingers, the color of sunflower petals in meadows where life is all right, where life is but a trip to the sources of beauty, where life is a lie in the eyes of pessimists but a reality in the eyes of optimists and a random occurrence in the eyes of realists, perhaps more of a premonition birthed from a slight case of cherophobia, and that’s quite the opposite for me. I am convinced that this blight upon the world is only a fleeting phenomenon and will pass to resume happiness, or at least the only kind of happiness that writers are endowed, but with each and each second, a welt of apprehension absorbs any loyalty to the future and warps it towards nullification.

All I know is that I need to reach Jack and Edie’s house sooner so that I can talk about why Lucien is winding up in odd places both in his mind and in his location, about how I can help him when he doesn’t wish to be helped, about what the final steps are to ensure that he is okay, about what will transpire if those final steps aren’t so profitable for all parties. The walk is a distanced one, on the contrary, but I am still able to extend my feet towards the house in a shorter period of time than I would’ve expected with all of this weight on my shoulders, weight placed upon me by the person about whom I will speak with Edie today.

I scale the front steps rapidly, as if two or three extra seconds mean anything to my friend’s well being, and maybe they do. After all, two or three seconds can sentence someone to life or death, plunging into the murky depths of the water after a bridge throws you off, being upright in the kitchen at one moment and smashing your temple against the counter at the next moment, fingers suspended over a totalitarian switch whose controlling nature you willingly warrant just before you slip away from its power as a cause of its power, too many instances where death is so close yet so far, where two or three seconds are more significant than one would first suspect, where I am an anxious mess who likes to fabricate excuses for mundane situations.

As I knock on the door energetically, Edie allows those two or three seconds I just regained to make her way towards the aperture, then opening it with no clue as to who it is, which is a fool’s move on her part but a move of someone who isn’t as nervous as I am. “Allen, what are you doing here?” Edie asks, wrapping her cardigan around her thin waist as if it’s cold, when I’m colder in the November air and have not once thought to bring a jacket, though that’s because the gravity of the melancholic circumstances has been transmuted into heat to the point where the chill is irrelevant and can fly by undetected.

Guarding a tone that doesn’t shake, which is a harrowing and arduous task for a person whose tone is almost always shaking, I deliver the response promptly. “I need to talk about Lucien.”

I probably will do much more than that, like sob about how this isn’t fair to anyone around my stumbling companion because no one deserves to be unsuspecting and then struck with an atomic bomb of emotions, about how I can’t live without someone as influential as Lucien Carr is to me, about how I cannot simply return to an old life of monotony and artificial intellect for the pretentious scoundrels of the internet; like shatter one of Edie’s prized vases just from the thought of losing the person who has given me a home after knowing me for only a few days, the person from whom I learned so much more than school or my parents or Jack and Edie ever taught me, the person who is sliding away as if he’s the silk of his voice; like scream uncontrollably without saying a word, because that is how I can articulate my feelings the most accurately, and that is how I make certain that Edie is clueless about how much I am suffering at the hands of both myself and Lucien Carr.

“Why? Has something happened to him?” Edie waits there for a few moments, anticipating my reply, but she notices a lack of politeness that _I_ , the person to whom Edie’s classic politeness is directed, wouldn’t even have noticed, and she invites me into her home, an abode that reeks of lilac and the decadent ignorance of the suburbs.

This will be a long chat.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: tfw edie has the chance to redeem yourself but you're lazy and can't write for shit so you don't include their conversation
> 
> anthropomorphism: applying human qualities to non-humans (basically reverse furries)
> 
> ~Dakotail


	35. you know he dead

Lucien has no idea where he’s going, but that doesn’t matter to him when he’s got a death wish on his mind. Well, not exactly a death wish in a corporeal form, rather a death wish that obliterates all of his morals to instead live freely and choose to utilize that freedom in a destructive manner, which isn’t advised by many, but it’s what he needs at the moment when he turned away every person who just wanted to help him, including his own best friend who was invested in him more than anyone, and it’s not like he can go back to plead for mercy, because everyone knows that men are fragile when it comes to their masculinity, and nothing hurts a man more than reneging on his brutal words from the heat of a situation, so they suffer alone, and Lucien supposes that this is where they collect their strength from in the way of veneers and deception, as they are forced to walk through hell with no one to guide them, and they toughen up their skin and sturdy their bones and square their shoulders and meander through the screeching fires of the underworld.

And that’s what Lucien is doing at this time, except the underworld here is the opposite of the general imagery. The general underworld is as hot as a desert and even hotter so, like the temperature has baked peppers into one’s skin and branded them with searing metal to mark them as taken, while this underworld in which Lucien strolls warily is as cold as his heart for pushing away people who love him, like rain cascading from the sky and freezing half way down the slope because they are imprisoned in torturous bonds just as he is.

Lucien Carr recognizes that he is being a coward, being the type of people that he absolutely despises for narrowing the expanse that is life to instead wallow in fear and selfishness, but Lucien Carr recognizes that he might as well despise himself for doing shit like this, shit like sneaking out of the dingy old apartment to dwell in a dingy old bar with citizens of Paterson, New Jersey that thankfully don’t know him but might know his body after the night has slipped its ashen film over the sky, which he hasn’t shamed before as a coping mechanism but could shame due to the circumstances of his use of it, though it’s not like he’s going to revise his actions to soothe the person that wouldn’t be soothed if he were to desert his motives, so he sticks himself to his plan of questionable intentions.

For some undiscovered reason, Lucien is extremely anxious to do something as mundane as step through the doors and into the bar. The outcome of the night should be the more worrying event, but the troubled wayfarer is rather stricken by the weight of entering the path that will _lead_ him to that event, somewhat of a paradox in a mind that praises them but not in this moment, and it’s like a tug of war now that he’s been stationed in front of the gates of hell for a few seconds longer than this outgoing writer would usually be stationed here. It’s frustrating to say the least, because it seems as though the qualities Lucien once boasted of are nothing but bitches to deterioration, and it’s reached the point where he can’t even fucking open a door, not a result of his physical strength, however, rather his mental strength, when his mind is supposed to be the thing he trusts the most, when his mind is fleeing.

On the contrary, Lucien Carr, a man of scholarly excellence in an institution amorphous and like no other, will not condone his insolence, and no matter how difficult it is, he forces himself to be as reckless as he is when he doesn’t give a shit, now ineluctably woven into a moment when he does, and as if it were a thousand pounds, the door to the bar uneasily slides open.

Lucien, at a loss for better metaphors due to the crumbling of a brain who would regularly gush them, believes that he is rising from the cackling dirt of his grave that he plowed over with the truck of his mind. Lucien Carr is much more than pushing overtop his body with a wheelbarrow in which his peers reside, much more than helplessness.

He wants to fix himself, repair a broken child not with his friends but with a _deity_ who wishes to fix him, with a deity that has led similar people into similar prospects, and he lets the anger fill him. He lets the anger twist his soul into a rag to wipe its eyes with. He lets the anger pull him from the ashes of his smoldering ambitions of childhood and grasp the last ember trembling with the capacity for rebirth. He lets the anger guide him blindly fumbling into a heavenly deliverance that he have never glimpsed before, never in his writing or in his imagination that was too extraordinary to document, nowhere in a soul as shattered as his. He lets the anger marry him and consummate the union with the splitting of an axe on his newfound steel body, bathed in lava and fortified by his faithful rudiarius of antipathy. He lets the anger convince him of its benefits, of its potency even in the backwash of poison, of potential he could not derive from himself. He lets the anger be the only friend he will never need, the only friend he will ever want. He lets the anger be more than the scar tissue in the matter his very own brain, more than pretending that he is okay when he is far from it. He lets the anger thrive in him, plant its tendrils of power into the blankness of schizotypality until all he knows is its shivering embrace. He lets the anger alchemize his fears into glass at which he can marvel under a silky blanket of stars, now polluted by the evolution of an anthropoid spleen he can never reverse and whose tales he pens into paper with ink dripping from a quill like blood drips from his wearied eyes. He lets the anger persuade him into cognitive reproduction to fuel an indomitable ego, an ego that may be his own, an ego that may be shared between him and his friend sprung fresh from the widely renowned throne of hell. He lets the anger be his sole cadence humming lowly under treacherous nights in the heart of _his_ heart, a compendium of artificialized knowledge slammed into paper that will never compare to this deity. He lets the anger drape him in libations to their collective success and drizzle its elegant possessions with wine sour enough for inebriation. He lets the anger blindfold him from the pleas of people who never cared before, pleas for mercy, pleas for release, pleas for empty words. He lets the anger kick scotch over his grave both to wish it good riddance and to spoil the dirt in which _he_ spoiled before they met. He lets the anger fix him, passing an invitation card over to a burdened man at the bar with a growing thirst for recklessness his partner instead of the person he should be with right now, reassuring that person that everything is okay, even when it’s not, because that’s what love is.

But it’s a fucking fools’ move to assume that Lucien Carr knows anything about love, when he’s climbing into a coffin of eroticism with someone who never begged for their ashes to be with his, when another man would’ve been fulfilled by the prospect, when that man has no idea where his friend has gone and would be horrified to know that Lucien is at a bar filled with people that don’t give a shit about him besides his body, as frail as it is, but Lucien doesn’t seem to give a shit about anything, either, so it is with the peeling of his emotion (sparing anger, of course) that he approaches just the apathy that he needs for the night.

Who has the time to care about explaining emotion when there’s someone standing at the back of the room who seems to understand the complexity of Lucien Carr’s bereavement? Yes, the young writer is as dangerous as any other writer is (more so, in fact), and yes, it’s shameful to be out on the town when there are people elsewhere who could give him lifelong gifts, but can one really scorn his choices in partners when it’s the closest thing Lucien has to acceptance? Lucien isn’t sure what the stranger knows with that watchful stare of his, but perhaps it’s something that he lacks, something that he hopes to regain through the channel of another person, no matter how sordid that may seem to the public.

But as he preaches, being a writer is about presenting the truth to people who are scared of it in order to broaden their perception of life. Being a writer is not about sheltering the dirty parts of mental exploration, because chances are someone will derive meaning from them, meaning that could potentially shift their perspective on life forever, and that’s Lucien’s dream after abandoning the rest of them. This may be destructive at the first glance, but no one can truly understand anything at such a scanty analysis, now can they?

Maybe Lucien’s just scouring his brain for excuses, and maybe he just doesn’t care about them anyway.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I call myself lazy so often and some of you like to debate it but like.....I literally included lines from my poems in this to hit a word count after not writing for three weeks like???
> 
> ascenticism: refraining from indulging in pleasures to instead pursue "virtuous" lifestyles
> 
> ~Dakotable-flipper


	36. excuse me curfew is at 4:20

Lucien received what he came to the bar to receive: an escape. He received the perfect portions of being fucked both by recklessness and by a man he had never seen before in his entire life, a man he trusted nonetheless because he was only using him to gain what he had lost, and through all of this apparent gratification, Lucien has never felt more sordid than he does in this moment, striding across the sidewalk in a tube as cold as it was when he strode towards the bar to pick up this impenetrable layer of guilt, striding towards his apartment and towards his friend who had no fucking idea that he was wasting an existence as precious as Lucien Carr’s, an existence that could have sparked other people’s existence, and though that is not his duty, it is his skill set, but it is being wasted on booze and a carefree attitude in a world where it is imperative that he cares at least a little bit, because sooner or later he’ll be dead, but with the state of things, it will be the former, and I will have no idea what the hell happened to my spunky roommate who used to believe in the world.

It is fairly evident that Lucien stores just enough faith in me that he will feel remorse for what he has done and what he will do, but that’s still not enough faith for him to persuade himself against his current route of regrettable actions that will inevitably tear my life apart and send me back to the basement of Jack and Edie’s house where I was lonelier than the majority of the world on Valentine’s Day. I can’t return to that, not when _every_ day with Lucien is Valentine’s Day, not when I’ve glimpsed too much life to cage myself in a dark box of writing articles for phonies, not when I’ve seen a lot yet not an adequate amount to survive on my own, not when Lucien Carr is the only person I have to keep me afloat, a buoy chained to the sand by force in the middle of a hurricane but making the best out of his innate abilities, though it appears that his innate abilities either aren’t suitable enough or are withering away.

At least he has the decency to show up at the apartment again to put my worries to rest, though he’ll probably introduce even more worries to me than before, but with my determination to fix him, I’ll do my best to resolve those, too. However, as Lucien ascends the steps to the apartment and I rush out to greet him after being absent for the night, I realize that fixing him may be close to impossible.

He does not speak immediately, instead grasping the opportunity to search my face for the intentions of kicking him out of my life, intentions that are as absent as he was last night, but he is melancholy nevertheless, melancholy enough to ask a question burdened by twenty-four years of living with a writer's’ soul “If I am a master of spontaneous beginnings, and you are a master of tragic endings, then where is the middle to preserve our relationship? There isn’t enough time for us.” The canoe named Lucien’s voice snaps, and he plunges into the icy river of tears, thrashing within them in the hopes of embracing me, but when he finally does, it is not reassuring or warm or tender. It is as cold as his heart, the whimpering child of hypothermia from one’s own indomitable distress, and I almost comment on it, then stopping myself because I know that Lucien is aware of it too and hates it just the same as I do.

I have forgotten how silence tastes on the cliff of my tongue, how unsettling it is to scream with no sound, but we are not speaking when we write, and that is why we always get away with documenting our opinions, because even with cloth over our mouths we continue to flex our fingers towards the freedom of mind.

I’m lost now, because my computer is nowhere to be seen, and it is my sole duty to speak with my mouth, not my fingers. I have no fucking idea how to proceed, but Lucien is still waiting as if I do. I’m not as strong as he thinks I am. I’m just a stupid writer from Paterson, New Jersey who happened to stumble upon something worthwhile. That’s it, or at least that _should_ be it, because now I’m wrapped in this pit of dread and miscommunication, and there is never any clarity in a writer’s mind, especially when they are together.

Maybe I should’ve known that this wouldn’t work out, and maybe I should’ve tried harder, but I’m nevertheless suspended in Lucien’s demeaning gaze as he expects an answer that I cannot give, and I swear to God that I’m done, because in the pitfalls of my insufferable youth I made the mistake of falling in love with someone who would leave me, and I can’t fucking handle that.

I am not a man to cower in the face of death, but that is not what this is. This is much more than death to a single person, much more than a shadowed funeral limited by the paltry size of my bank account. This is the death of Lucien Carr, a brilliant writer and an extraordinary human, yes, but it is also the death of the ideas that could’ve been sprung from his head, the death of new movements and new freedom from the archaic rhyme and meter, the death of people he could’ve inspired to create their own amazing futures, people like me.

I may be able to document some of those ideas in writing or in speeches I’m too nervous to deliver in order to inspire blossoming writers as a result, but it will feel as plastic as a biography written by someone who lives in a different century than the subject. With Lucien, he was so far above me that I felt as detached as that biography writer, no matter how fervidly Lucien attempted to draw me into his ramblings. I simply cannot understand what his mind possesses, because everyone experiences things differently, but philosophers present their concepts as facts engraved on the tombstone of morality, unwavering in the inky silhouettes of a cultural deviant, and it’s like we followers are tripping behind. I can do so no longer, and I must provide Lucien with an answer, however crappy it is.

“Maybe the richest things are only rich because of their density.” I’m full of complete and utter bullshit, but it is complete and utter bullshit that Lucien needs, so long as he can derive his own significance from it, and by the partially consoled expression on Lucien’s tear-stained face, I can decipher that my plan was successful, and he has derived the right amount of significance for him to be halfway calmed.

On the contrary, Lucien presents the opposite effect than I would’ve predicted, diving back into his self-deprecation. “I ruined any riches we could’ve shared.”

Mending Lucien will be a great task, but if I am able to achieve it, the outcome will be the most splendid thing I will ever witness. I will have maintained the splendor of my best friend for as long as he needs me to maintain it, and if I am prosperous enough, then in time he will be able to maintain it for himself, but all of this is wishful thinking, daydreaming to construct a shield against the wreck shivering before me because I don’t want to believe that this is what my companion has come to.

It is time to stride past all of my doubts about helping him, time to poke out my elbows to jab my opposers with a weapon created solely by me as a _part_ of me, and if I require more pretentious bullshit to assist my crumbling friend, so be it.

Slipping a hand around my companion’s cheek like a mother helping their child through panic, I drill my chocolate eyes right into Lucien’s ocean blues, dulled by a storm overhead and dulling still, and forcefully state, “You are flavored by the forbidden, but do not think for one moment that it makes you any less beautiful.”

Too often I have witnessed in the media writers who have cascaded into darkness because the qualities of which they were once proud have become the bane of their existence due to other people’s faulty judgments of them, and I’m not about to allow Lucien to suffer the same fate. Yes, he may be destined for a fate just as agonizing, but he is too magnificent to fall towards the deceiving pillows of the mainstream, no matter how easy it may seem to do so.

In order to release some of the tension of being told for once that he shouldn’t go and fucking die, Lucien laughs nervously. “Next you’re going to say you support meter.”

“Truth is, Lucien, that we _do_ sometimes live in a world of meter, and that meter is how much we can endure as mundane human beings, so if I were to apply that to our relationship, then we would be an absolutely shitty poem.”

All of the sudden, he gets defensive, a portion of the dullness in his ocean eyes parting for a raging storm. “Fuck meter in any shape. We’re beautiful.”

“No, we’re disintegrating.”

I know Lucien has been endeavoring to hide this fact, but it’s no secret that we’re falling apart faster than we fell together. Lucien is spiraling into a nostalgic oblivion, and he will not grant me access into a spot of aiding him. No relationship has lasted forever in truth, at least no relationship built on feeling rather than choice, but Lucien is a man of impulse, not of devotion to chains cloaked by the misnomer of commitment, so no matter how arduous it is to accept that we’re deteriorating, the day will come when that is the only option.

However, as I said, Lucien is a man of impulse, not of choice, except for when his choice is to hold onto things irrationally, things that are eroding based on his previous choices, and it may be that he loves me and wants to love me forever, but I can detect that he loves his imminent death more and is only selfish for drawing me in when all I’ll ever be right now is his buoy when he promised to be mine.

“Don’t say that,” he snaps almost instantly after I admit that maybe we aren’t as perfect as we had once thought, as sturdy.

“You’re the one who preaches never to avoid the truth of life, but I suppose you’re only strong when it suits you.” I shrug sarcastically, pinning my eyes to anywhere besides my companion because I, too, am terrified.

“ _Allen_ ,” Lucien huffs. then inadvertently playing host to the abrupt onset of his tears’ second round in the fighting arena.

“You know, when you want to be remembered, you can always soak your life in misery and send it to a writer to deal with, and that’s what I did, but you can’t even handle your own life, so how is this supposed to operate?”

“It isn’t,” Lucien confesses, finally admitting that not everything will work out in his favor. “I shouldn’t even be here.”

The point is that Lucien _should_ be here, that Lucien is engaging in acts that oppose that goal, including agreeing with the notion that he needs to desert me physically when he’s already deserted me emotionally, but it is my duty to bring him back from both, though I can’t do squat with someone else’s mind. “I know I can’t stop you from doing reckless things with the promising ordeal that is your life, but if you leave, just remember that you will be missed dearly.”

What a cliche thing to say to someone who deflects the cliche. I should be ashamed of myself, but there’s no time for that when Lucien could be staying or leaving at any moment now, so I only anticipate the despair flowing from Lucien’s berry lips.

“People will only miss me when I’m dead, so now what? Do I wait?” He tosses his hands into the November air, a landscape of enchanting decay, incapable of finding rest in this debate. “This shouldn’t be the only reason to live. I don’t owe anyone anything. They won’t know they’ll miss me until they’re lowering my coffin into the ground.”

“Actually, my intentions are to keep you _out_ of a grave.”

Lucien’s foot is digested by the brick of the front porch steps as he grows increasingly impatient, barking, “Yeah, well you’re doing a great fucking job with that.”

I smother my voice in quietness, now bashful and somewhat guilty for things I _should not_ be guilty for, and all I can mutter through my self-pity and lack of security is, “I’m doing my best.”

And that is when Lucien crumbles completely, with tears leaping from the seas in emotional suicide, with metaphorically outstretched hands guarding the remnants of his tattered soul, with only the humility of poverty after his boastful pretentiousness was stripped from him by demons he can’t even see, and he is finally bare. “Oh God, I know.” He hurls his arms around my shoulders, shaking and weeping, no longer the brave man I thought he was, but perhaps stoicism is not the only bravery there is. Perhaps the most important kind of bravery is pretending to be all right until you feel that you are courageous enough to confide in someone, and I cannot express how fucking proud I am of Lucien Carr, after all of the hell he’s trudged through.

Lucien Carr is every fiber of my being. He is the cells that compose my body like he composes his words to allure me into his stunning captivity. He is the moon that chases the sun, the moon that chases me, the resilience reflected from its ashen surface as it shields its face in the night because it knows when to speak and when to observe. He is every tiptoe of wings upon a gentle soul’s limbs, every star lapsing in and out of view to enhance his magnificence when it arrives. He cannot leave me because of demons infiltrating a place that is not theirs.

“What did you do while you were out?” As Lucien’s friend, it is my job to know why he decided it was a smart idea to venture outside of the apartment late at night to throw his life away, primarily now that I’ve tasked myself with going above and beyond my call so that I can ensure his safety henceforth, as much as Lucien protests.

My companion’s shoulders tense, which is a weakness to Lucien know that I’ve decrypted this, as he’s all about secrecy, and he’s never one to act like he’s anything less than a hero. “We’re not talking about this, Allen.”

“Yes, we are. Do you want to die?”

Lucien contemplates this for longer than he should, warning me that the answer to my rhetorical question is actually yes, and with his next sentence, it is confirmed. “You know what? That would genuinely be nice. We humans are all destined for death, and one day all humans will be dead concurrently, but I can’t deal with another sixty years of hell. Bring me to a fucking grave, Ginsy.”

I retract my body from our embrace, just as Lucien will one day retract from living judging from the gravity of his prior words, but I can’t fucking deal with that. I can’t deal with the volatile alternation of our intentions, alternations that leave us both confused as to what we want for our lives, so I might as well clear things up with a bit of lip. “Can you please stop with this existential crisis propaganda? It’s barely true. We of the human race will live forever, or until our planet is exterminated by some sort of pandemic disease or the sun’s supernova or an invasive species, but we will not be exterminated by daily life and daily death. Please get this through your dense head, for I’m beginning to worry that this nihilism bullshit is a sign that life is only pointless because your illusions of grandeur have convinced you that your death is the world’s death, not because humanity as a whole is a waste of time, and you may be right, Lucien, but I just don’t want you to be devoured by a fascination with death so potent that it will surely lead to your own death sooner than you _should_ pass as a young man capable of so much more than the bitterness plaguing your life right now.”

This silences my companion, which is both a helpful and a frustrating phenomenon, because on one hand, I want him to be slapped in the face by the weight of this situation instead of being childishly disposed towards it, but on the other hand, I need him to tell me why the fuck he’s misplaced his verve so abruptly.

It’s a tragedy that I have no idea why Lucien is so upset all of the sudden. It never really crossed my mind before. The only thing that did cross my mind was a solution to it, which I suppose isn’t so bad after all. There’s no use getting hung up on the cause when the antidote is all that matters, but a cause sure as hell would appease me for a bit. However, Lucien will never spill anything other than his own blood, so prying is as futile as his reason for neglecting my faith in him in the first place.

No matter what, he will not share, though at least he disguises it with the encouraging words of “I don’t know what I’d do without you, Ginsy” aimed towards me when he’s the one who needs them desperately, as he’s elucidated that he’s capricious and complex and callous at times, but he’s himself, and himself is exasperating, but himself is what I love, and himself is what I’m losing, the delightful young man whom I thought would be _everlastingly_ delightful.

I am an idiot to surmise that anyone could be everlastingly delightful just because my companion sometimes thought he was so much better than the rest of his peers, so much happier, and as he would glance past the dinner parties of people caged by taxes and politics, he would laugh because that was not him, and then his approaching wilderness would laugh, because he is caged by something greater, something that will snatch him from the bed of joy and throw him to the dirt-slicked streets, something that will ensure that he catches against the vindictive pebbles whose wit is sharpened by the rain, something that will invade his head and leave the blame to himself, because with taxes and politics, the government is at fault, but with demons and stones, there is only him.

Is Lucien just now finding that the peak of his exploration is sobbing behind a silhouette striding undisputed through the halls of other people’s obliviousness? What about cracking his arm like a twig falling _from_ those twigs in an ascendent betrayal? Does he not deserve _more_? Does he not deserve _life_ in a mind that’s ushering him towards death? Does he not deserve to eventually dig the fact that I care into his head?

When will he understand that I would do anything for him? When will he understand that his life is worth living? When will he understand that he has benefited me in ways that I can’t even describe? When will he understand that understanding the world is no different than understanding himself, that it should be easier? The only thing he thinks is easier is being a child, reminiscing on the halcyon days when shit didn’t mean a thing beyond shaping his personality forever, but since then surely he has explored so much! Alas, he would be forever this child until the depression swarmed him, but that would be okay for him, because as this child he explored the dips and turns of the trees and the dips and turns of his very bones, conviviality the marrow too sweet to swallow. But who knew that he, a playful enchantress, would become the bitch of melancholy? Certainly not the charming young schoolboy who only cared for self-induced entertainment, and certainly not me if I knew him back then, which I might not have wanted to, but I feel like I could’ve been that childhood friend who unknowingly could’ve redirected the route of Lucien’s future into something more pleasant, something that isn’t this, sobbing on the porch of a place that’s supposed to protect you but only serves as a reminder that the sole thing grounding him here is the fact that capitalism has told him he needs to pay rent or else fucking die, as if he wouldn’t do that anyway, but he has a certain knack for listening to people that shouldn’t hold any influence over him yet hold more than his own best friend does, and I’m just so fucking sorry that it had to be this way for him when he of all people should be able to make his own decisions without the presence of consequences larger than normal looming over him like eyelashes snapping together in the ebony textile of death.

But as he says, death is inevitable, and the world will blink, and he will not vanish. He will die, just like every human he abhors, and now we’re just waiting for the click. I comprehend that I will be devastated when that click slides through my ear canal like the drying wind upon my damp face of tears and helplessness.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: this is so long (that's what she said hahaihatemyself)
> 
> atomism: the belief that all things in the universe are constructed with indestructible materials
> 
> ~Dakotater


	37. bullshit in a china shop

It is evident from the way that Lucien has been acting since he returned home from a night of doing who knows what that he is somewhat scared of me for some reason, like I’m a dog owner who would lash out at him for something as mundane as sniffing at the food on the table. He’s timid around me now, always minding where he steps and what he says and what he does, things that had never been imperative to him before with his spontaneous personality, and it’s just leaving me to wonder what the hell happened last night and how he found himself in that mess in the first place, but he hasn’t told me anything yet, and it is my guess that he never will, so _all_ I can do is wonder.

And because I have no evidence to hold against my companion, I won’t be justified when I stick around the house all day and follow him around everywhere. Lucien obviously knows why I would do that, but he would pretend as though he doesn’t, as though he’s the victim when I only want to protect him from his own reckless nature, and he’s already suspicious of my hovering presence here, primarily because I haven’t been able to wrestle down any coffee this morning, which is the drink I prioritize before anything else, and Lucien is an observant man who would not disregard that lightly.

With that in mind, I have left him to his own quite troubling devices while I run and errand to the supermarket to replenish his refrigerator with something other than the molding fruits and the inedible shit that he’s placed inside for fun or an experiment, and though I’m worried out of my mind about what he’ll do, I have learned from experience that guarding someone closely is no remedy for their ailment and will worsen their symptoms, inviting paranoia into the house until the end.

So, having been granted permission to do as he pleases (though that may not have been the exact wording I expelled but is certainly the wording that Lucien will follow), my companion takes to wandering around the house in only a halfway buttoned dress shirt and boardshorts of all things, drinking up his newfound liberty.

He glides his fingers across the walls threatened by peeling lavender wallpaper, across the papers scattered around the floor like bullet shells in a battle zone, across the objects he could never relinquish to someone who knows nothing about them and only enjoys them for their aesthetic purposes when that is only the superficial level, the baseline of beauty. He’s enjoying himself for the first time in a while, alone and without me to pester him about his health, but maybe being thrown to the bliss of freedom is what’s _best_ for his health, not careful regulations of what he eats and what he does, how he chooses to live his life in order to expand it.

Everything seems like it will be grand for about an hour (or however long I spend at the supermarket trying to feed the both of us while Lucien abandons his ability to take care of himself), except a knocking at the door jolts my friend away from his serenity and plants thoughts in his head about who it could be and why they’re here, why they’ve interrupted his session of liberation to imbue him with useless information that he could do without.

Reluctantly, Lucien trudges to the door, skipping two steps at a time like the king of second grade transportation through the halls, and he then discovers that opening the door isn’t as easy as it used to be. It’s a frustrating fact, prominent in his mind for only a moment before he divides the frame into a slab and a shell and then it seats itself at the back of his head, because now there’s something worse to think about, something that has been plaguing him for a few days, something he wished since his teenage years that he could ever see again: David Kammerer.

“Lu,” David whispers, shaving his eyes into slits as if he can’t believe that Lucien is real, as if he didn’t fucking show up at his apartment without a warrant before he arrests him in belt scars and the handcuffs of misconstrued nostalgia, as if he didn’t just ruin everything Lucien spent years rebuilding.

Lucien doesn’t allow David to step into his home, as he had that opportunity eight years ago when he did much more than step — violated it, more like — and this is all he can do to protect himself from the monster waiting outside, the monster waiting also for a response, and a kind one at that, but a kind one is not what Lucien will give. “What are you doing here, David?” he asks, voice as flat as a lion on the hunt, which in his case is a hunt for any signs that he could be in danger. He’s surprisingly calm for the dire situation, though it isn’t typical of Lucien to be enraged when it is unnecessary. He prefers insurmountable anxiety, wallowing in the core of his stomach, where chemicals churn chemicals, where dangers are somatized, where one receives the sensation of riding a roller coaster when the only roller coaster present is that of their life.

David is partially taken aback by Lucien’s unwillingness to just drop everything and move to Paris with a man who messed up his fucking life, acting like it’s a normal occurrence for your ex-boyfriend from when you were sixteen to randomly show up at your apartment, but Davis has never been so adept at recognizing where to draw the line, so he’s just as stubborn as he was many years ago. “I just need to talk to you.”

There are more questions to be asked and answers to be withdrawn before Lucien could do so much as consider talking diplomatically with his abuser, and as much as David abhors that notion, Lucien has been imprisoned within what David wants for far too long, and it’s time for that to cease. He chooses to address how he has been located when the last time he saw David, he was at the park, and the time before that, he was still living in his parents’ house reeking of smoke and bad habits and hosting withering ambitions, so there’s no way in hell David could’ve found Lucien unless he worked some magic with someone in Paterson who owed him a favor and was granted access to Lucien’s private files, which admittedly is not the way to go when you’re trying to win someone back.

“How the hell did you find me?” Lucien is heating up, but he halts himself before he can release all of his energy, and that would be a lot in this moment. That would probably fling David back into the street to never return, and though that is what Lucien wishes would happen, he’s too tired to do anything except for bottle up his fear, because part of him is still living in the days when expressing himself meant punishment, when the only color he could paint was violet on his back as it was struck onto him by a tool far from a traditional paintbrush but nevertheless a paintbrush in theory. No one should have to exist like that, and no one should have to be returned to that.

David waves the question away to instead focus on his own selfish desires, but Lucien knows better than to allow him to get away with it, so when the abuser claims, “That’s not important,” Lucien won’t stand for such a pitiful response.

“The hell it’s not!” The young man argues as the angels wonder where his self-control went, if it flew out the door and smacked David on the head on its way out. “You can’t just show up at my house after eight years of nothing and expect me to let you inside like we’re fine.”

Cocking his head, oddly reminiscent of the dog that he is, David innocently negates, “Aren’t we?”

“Oh my god.” Lucien shakes his head, straps his jaw to the school of stone, and slams the door in his ex-boyfriend’s unshaven face, having witnessed enough to understand that David has not changed at all, that David still cannot sympathize, that David still cannot even _understand_ the circumstances, let alone form cruelty from that point of comprehension.

“Lucien!” David’s fist hammers against the sturdy structure of the door, the only thing his former companion has to protect himself with now that his mental and physical walls are collapsing. “Lucien, I still love you!”

Those five words are the five words Lucien prayed he would never hear as he also prayed that he would never see David again. One prayer was a backup for the other. In case one of them tore his life apart, the other would preserve what was left of it, but now both have been obliterated, and Lucien is thrown into the depths of panic.

Lucien swings the door open with an unexpected surge of strength that he thought was all but gone in his cognitive degeneration, only performing this action so that he can utter a simple command that David can’t even process: “You need to go away.”

“You need to let me in!”

“I already did, and that was the worst mistake of my entire life. I tried to forget you, and after almost a decade I was doing well, until you just fucking waltzed in here, into _my_ safe space, and have now made me associate it with _your_ filthy venom.”

David’s shoulders gyrate as if it were an anchor thrown over the side of a ship and into the ocean of Lucien Carr’s eyes purgatoried by melancholy’s slaves, and he’s back at it with his flimsy excuses, excuses that his ex-boyfriend will ever believe for a second. “Lucien, I’m sorry.”

Lucien is fragile, but he has to be strong to speak his mind to a person who would punish him if he ever tried to speak his mind eight years ago, but Lucien is twenty-four years old currently, not sixteen, and it is a certain fact that he has improved in his field of confidence. “No, you’re not sorry, because if you were, if you still love me, then you wouldn’t be shoving me into this uncomfortable situation. Love is about devoting everything you have to ensure someone’s happiness, no matter how much it costs you. Love is so rare that it has barely existed in the history of mankind, usually presenting itself in blips if it even presents itself at all. What you have for me is not love, David.” Lucien laughs, half exasperated and half shaken up by the absurdity of all of this. “Hell, what I have for my roommate isn’t even love after all the shit I’ve tormented him with. Quite frankly, you’re only obsessed with me, and I need you out of my life.”

David’s reply treks through the lying anus he calls a mouth, a two letter name that plants thousands of bugs under Lucien’s skin, biting and scratching and reproducing until all he is is just a _virus_ , incurable, deadly, unwanted by anyone except the killer called his vaccine. “Lu…”

Lucien’s ocean eyes venture around the surrounding alabaster to signify that he isn’t going to put up with his old friend’s shit any longer, and his hands snap onto his waist, saying both that he’s wearied by these fool games and that he won’t stop blocking the door so David can’t sneak inside. “Don’t play the victim here, David.”

“I’m not playing!” he pleads, but there is no tolerance left in Lucien’s battered soul, only hatred, and that may not be healthy, but neither is this relationship between him and David, so it fits like a knife strapped within flexing fingers ready to ward off an opposition.

“Do you want me to call the fucking police?”

Desperate, David shrugs.“I want you to call me your friend, at least.”

The young man’s mouth sloshes around within the captivity of his clenched jaw, his foot monitoring the rhythm of his billowing heartbeat. “You’re fucking pathetic, nothing more and nothing less. I can’t wait until you turn cold and die and I live on with a prosperous career ahead of me.”

“You’re so self assured, Lucien. Maybe we should sit down and have a cup of tea.” David attempts to brush past his infatuation, but Lucien is sturdy enough to deflect him and place the man back in his position of helplessness on the front steps of a place that is his own.

“Maybe you should leave and never come back.”

David is suspended in shock for about seven seconds, only staring at the man he used to “love” more than anyone when in reality it was only an obsession, and to Lucien’s astonishment, his command succeeds. David turns from the front stoop and descends the stairs without a word or even a despondent expression, and though Lucien is completely and utterly confused by this, he’s relieved nonetheless.

But he can only know that he left, not if he’ll never come back. That’s the topic to keep him up at night, the topic he’s worried about for eight years, the topic to ultimately destroy him.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I've been writing longer chapters after taking a three week break wow
> 
> careerism: the goal to expand one's career as the main point of life
> 
> ~Dakotorsion


	38. I love death and being dead

I was foolishly praying, as I promenaded through the winding aisles of the local supermarket on the hunt for sustenance, that Lucien’s attitude would have improved by the time I ventured back home, but as I said, it was a foolish prayer, and the moment I stepped into the house I could detect that nothing had shifted at all. He was still the same morose pile of laziness and spite, sipping the tiniest amount of tea just so that he could press it in between his berry lips as if he were killing it.

I assume that’s all he did, as Lucien didn’t appear to wreck anything while I was out. In fact, it looks as though he didn’t move anything at all, merely touched it at the most like a middle-aged white woman gliding her fingers along the walls of an abandoned house before she is captured by the umbrageous heart within. My roommate may be too wearied to do anything except sip that godforsaken tea that’s driving a wrench into our communication because it’s “not like he can do anything while he’s drinking, sorry”.

It’s obvious that he didn’t want to talk to me, instead muttering something about how he needed to cleanse himself, and shuffling off to the bathroom to spend who knows how long in the shower while I pondered where the hell his conviviality went, as this is not the Lucien Carr by whom I was enchanted when I first met him at the Paterson Public Library.

This could be because Lucien is only degenerating steadily, tumbling down the stairs yet rolling too quickly to detect where each ledge is and when he falls from it, or it could be because something happened while I was out at the store trying to feed the person who is losing his ability to do so himself, and while both are catastrophic occurrences to Lucien’s health, it’s no secret that the latter could be far more harmful than the former, especially because that occurrence could continue to manifest later down the road of gravely daggers and slick blades of grass creeping onto the path, and perhaps the worst part about this is that Lucien will never tell me what that occurrence was unless he pens it into a suicide note that he would never leave because it’s tacky and cliche and unlike him to give the world something when he owes it nothing, and all of this is falling apart right in front of me, with no solution in sight.

Lucien says I shouldn’t protest what is irreversible, but Lucien also says that nothing he does in life matters, when in reality it does matter if he can affect future generations sprawled across the map of time until our fiery life source becomes our death source. He can do so much, yet he chooses to ignore it to instead waste away in a dingy old apartment he can barely afford with the meager job he was able to attain after skipping college to unchain himself. When I try to express how much Lucien has changed my perspective on life, he only retaliates with the concept that I am only as enlightened as I am impressionable, and that his words are only scaffolding for the building of my mind, a hollow frame to support my own potential, and I know he’s just trying to be humble, despite shouting every thought he has about homosexuality in Greek and Roman mythology to the library patrons on the table in his fucking workplace, but he should really give himself more credit, tell himself that his life isn’t worthless, that it’s one of the rare few that imperatively craves to be lived, even if he struggles to live it.

But no, that’s not what he’s going to do. All that he _is_ going to do is waste an hour or so in the shower, allowing mitigated tears to plop against his back as his head hangs weighted by his feet and his soul vaporizes into steam insinuating the mirror upon which he will etch his last farewell. And it’s not like I can burst through the bathroom door and talk to my roommate, as I’ll be labeled a creep for lack of better, more rational words, and it’s anyway harsh to interrupt him while he’s enjoying one of his limited moments of peace, so I only wait for him to emerge, however far in the future that will be.

While nothing has been disturbed in the apartment from an inside man, I notice that there is a new voicemail left from someone outside of the house. Lucien Carr may be an extraordinary man, but he isn’t popular (sometimes he’s feared for being so wild and in people’s faces), and to the extent of my knowledge, I was unaware that he had any friends besides me, and maybe Edie and Jack if he’s feeling unjustly audacious. Lucien is the type of person to brag about his friends, not lure them into secrecy from his _best_ friend, as if I could be jealous when I hold the top spot, so who the hell could this voicemail be from?

I know it’s not my right to intrude, and I know hover parents are the parents keenest to emotional abuse, but I can’t grant Lucien a dip into the thick waters of danger just because it’s polite to mind my own fucking business. My business concerns my retrograde of a roommate and how long he has to live before he imposes permanent darkness upon himself, so without pausing to debate this any further, I slam my finger down on the voicemail button and anticipate a ster chat with Lucien about who the hell this person is.

There’s hesitant breathing on the other end, breathing from a man about whom I know nothing and of whom I’m slightly scared. He’s composing himself before he begins spewing out torture, which, from my rusty skills of deduction, means that this message is loaded with tumultuous intentions, intentions that will surely stomp panic into my already battered heart.

The stranger macerates his worries with a final breath, richer than the others before it, and proceeds with the message. “Lu,” is all he says at first, and it seems as though it was quite the ordeal just to shove that out of his deceitful lips.

I’ve never heard of this man before, yet he’s so intimate with my best friend that he has a fucking nickname for him. Yeah, Lucien calls me Ginsy on some occasions, and it’s no doubt my decision if I wanted to reciprocate that format, but the circumstances of that two letter sigh crackling through the receiver like fingers ravished by acrimony squashing a non-refundable plane ticket to hell are too foreboding for me to ignore. How close were these two, and for how long? Why is the stranger so stressed about his approaching message?

“I’m sorry about what happened earlier this morning.”

What _did_ happen earlier this morning? It must’ve transpired while I was out shopping for the means necessary to keep Lucien’s fading heart at the pace of normalcy, and that’s why I have no idea why this guy is calling. Is this why Lucien was remarkably peevish when I returned back home after my trip to the supermarket? Is this the event I predicted to be the reason why Lucien barely spoke to me before rushing off for a shower?

I don’t want him to keep secrets from me, but that’s all he’s been doing, just avoiding and avoiding and avoiding, bumping into things and being repelled by them next, heaping his worries onto each other to the point where they could suffocate him yet devoting every ounce of his energy to distancing himself from them all as if they’re worth his time.

I had always assumed that Lucien could take care of himself — after all, that’s what he had been doing before he met me, the overprotective mother of his life — but I’m now discovering that this is too much, even for him. Lucien is undoubtedly a bold man, brave and resilient and angering towards his opponents, but the catch is that he never actually considered his antagonists to be _his_ , only acknowledged that he was a blight to them. Perhaps this man on the telephone line is the real antagonist here, the train to plow down my friend as if he never existed, the ruiner of lives other than just Lucien’s, the antichrist for all I know, and he won’t stop fucking talking, and it’s almost like I don’t need an explanation when it’s flowing from his mouth, though I continue to listen, because I’m desperate for salvation in a man who intractably rejects it.

“I’ll admit that it was wrong to show up at your apartment offering no reason for doing so, but you need to understand that I am not the bad guy here.”

This guy just randomly appeared at the apartment uninvited and tried to convince Lucien that what he was doing wasn’t immoral? Just from the action of violating Lucien’s personal space in the form of a building leads me to believe that, whatever this guy did, it isn’t deserving of my companion’s praise, and he needs to get the hell out of his life.

I contemplate calling this unlawful stranger back and scold him for impinging on Lucien’s safe haven, not giving a single shit if he has no idea who I am, just as I have no idea who _he_ is, but my plan is thwarted when I spot Lucien traipsing through the hallway and into the kitchen, where I stand as I uncover secrets that I should not have uncovered, where I feel like a deer in the headlights, where I will be reprimanded for my nosiness.

Lucien is calm now, working a towel through his dampened locks of gold, but when he detects the faint sound of his friend’s voice on the answering machine, his eyes begin to cradle the rawest form of anxiety that I have ever seen in my life.

My roommate stalks over to me, as cautious as a protagonist in the presence of an unstable criminal as they reach to confiscate the gun, and he is no longer in the calm state I had hoped he would be in forever. “What are you doing, Allen?”

I can’t allow him to bypass me, to receive mollified treatment when such treatment is unfitting for the dire setting, so I cut right to the crucial bits of the matter. “Who is that man on the voicemail?”

Lucien shrugs it off, more panicked than casual. “That’s not important.”

“So you’re practically dying in your own self-pity, and you want to tell me that this man whose intentions sound pretty fucking vindictive isn’t important to the case?”

“It’s not your job to fucking babysit me, Allen,” Lucien contradicts, applying a scanty amount of torsion to his fingers to occupy himself in a time of nervousness. “I’m older than you anyway.”

“With that childish age card you pulled there, it might actually be my job. You’re the one who says power is based on how wide one has stretched their world, not on arbitrary statistics you couldn’t have controlled even at their genesis, but you’ve seemingly thrown that down the drain, so why is it that you’ve all of the sudden deserted every moral you used to cherish to instead dine on your own liver?” I stare at my companion, a travesty of holes and shame, but he is incapable of defending himself; he’s had enough.

“You want to know who that man is?” is Lucien’s new approach to the situation, his expression like a mother frustratingly relenting to their stubborn child. “His name is David Kammerer, and when we were both age sixteen, he was the reason I wanted to fucking die.”

I almost retort that he still wants to die in the present, but it dawns upon me that David is probably the reason for that. He was doing fine before David must’ve shown up in his life and warped everything towards his faulty perception of what love is. This man I’ve never met is the cause of Lucien’s demise. He is the reason why Lucien can’t even look at me. He is the reason why I can’t even look at _Lucien_. He is the reason why our joy has splintered into our murder weapons, why nothing is safe for us anymore.

I thought I was special to my roommate, but it seems I’ve been overpowered. I may be Lucien’s life, but I am not his death. David is. One can be more powerful than the other, and in this case it is abandoning me, so I am rendered irrelevant to the matter. I can continue to be what Lucien lives for, but that doesn’t mean shit when he craves oblivion more than he craves existence. There will always be pros and cons to living and dying, and I’m just the singular pro on Lucien’s list when death has so many more. It’s a fool’s move to trick myself into believing that I could stop him from drowning in the frost an old flame has brought about, but I am quite the fool, so I’m trying and failing and picking myself back up because that’s what every self-help manual will tell you to do, and it’s just not working, but I’m supposed to trust psychology, right? That’s what all of this is, just psychology and our brains and _why_ our brains have decided to torture us into accepting the hell that is gloomy metaphysics when the brain is supposed to be magnificent, and since I admire metaphors so much, it’s perhaps poetic to say that beneath the shiny exterior of our extraordinary brains, the force of David Kammerer lies within, watching and waiting, prompting his venom like it’s the dopamine we have long thirsted for.

But with an excess of dopamine, one becomes immune, and they find themselves hungering for more and more of it to try and rewire their broken system in which nothing makes sense, in which they are borderline insane in the middle of a safe spot called a prelude to time in an institution, in which living is like a psychedelic infarction to what they thought they knew, but soon enough they become aware of their trials and their mistakes and their malfunctioning body that used to move as if it were kin to the wind, and they become aware that they are trapped.

Lucien once hungered for more and more of David Kammerer until he, too, became aware of what was happening to him and somehow broke away from a man who claimed to be a part of him, which is a doctrine he believed for an extremely prolonged duration, a doctrine force fed through a tube because his teeth could no longer operate by themselves, a doctrine serving as a gag to his real opinions that may or may not have been dulled by the extension of his silence, but he was brave enough to slip through his bonds, a twenty-first century escapist renowned only to himself as a means to console his trembling body when he is scared and all alone in trenches furnished with quiet.

And maybe his time of being alone should’ve been treasured more than it was, because now that David Kammerer has reappeared in his life, Lucien has since been able to comprehend that if David’s ever present shadow is what it feels like to have a friend, he wants out of the deal, but after indelible belt scars and traumatization, he can’t escape again. He can _never_ escape at all.

This account becomes shockingly evident as Lucien unsheathes himself from a t-shirt as blank as his paralytic mind, scars bursting to life on top of his otherwise silky skin that, once upon a time, was capable of being callused beyond recognition and has since healed only a bit, his own body terrified of its battle wounds and pressing them back into the limited submission it can barely achieve.

Lucien, a boy beaten by life and its inhabitants, has grown strong both in character and in figure. He does not shake as his back is exposed candidly to me, tender muscles rippling under my touch, does not whimper or yelp from sword-wielding nostalgia for someone who doesn’t deserve it, does not tell me to release him, not because he is scared to do so, but because he is fortified enough to endure this contact.

“Thank you for opening up to me,” I acknowledge, the most appropriate thing I can say in this situation, a typical stock phrase printed in coming out manuals for its lack of problematic points, and on one hand, it’s the best I can do and something that can’t go wrong, but on the other hand, I kind of hate myself for proposing something that didn’t originate in my soul, a valley talented with so much more than seven meaningless words.

However, Lucien doesn’t seem to mind them. “I figured I should elucidate at least _one_ thing to you.”

“We can get through this,” I vow, the most genuine of promises. “Together.” This is when chocolate yearns for crystal, when mud cascades into the ocean but the ocean loves it, when our stare can only be upstaged by the mingling of our lips to signify that not all is lost.

The kiss is unlike our other one, with the romanticism of a Ferris wheel displaced by the romanticism of two souls wracked by timeless harmony, quenched and substantial on the scale of, and it’s not that it’s better than that carnival excursion, rather plastic. Bathed in trauma and withheld secrets, it’s no lie that this not the same, that it doesn’t maintain the allure of its predecessor, but it’s all we’ve got, and soon even _that_ might be lost.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: gotdamn elucidation
> 
> determinism: all events occur ineluctably
> 
> ~Dakotoe-job


	39. Lucien's in the closet again

Lucien Carr has known a lot of things throughout his lifetime, but the only thing he knows now is that he needs to get out. He needs to rummage through every item and toss out the unnecessary ones that will in no way benefit his death. He needs to lace together a ribbon of his ending in the bible that is his life, praised by many and misinterpreted by all. He needs to escape this prison that should be his paradise, this cesspool of sin and delusion. He needs a way out, and in his mind, an organ keen to versatility, the closet in his bedroom holds just the recipe for the kind of disaster he craves.

Lucien’s roommate has no idea that he’s currently on the hunt for a means of escaping, a tunnel in a peculiar form of flimsiness and pliance, an antidote to twenty-four years of self-destruction, a parting, and it is Lucien’s goal that his roommate will remain to have no clue about it, even if that roommate is in the house with him at the present moment, unsuspecting yet capable of catching Lucien in the act at any point in time if I only just looked far enough, though it’s not like Lucien’s complaining about his newfound freedom in the slightest, just that his paranoia is becoming sort of a duvet for his normal caution, and it’s relatively exasperating.

It feels as though every second he’s whipping his head around to see if anyone has barged in on his farewell extravaganza that only he should be a part of because he doesn’t owe anyone the majesty of watching him begin to rot, and every second there’s nothing there besides the door to the bedroom, keeping its distance yet peeking at Lucien as much as it can without allowing the rest of the apartment to do so in its vacancy. This is all that clouds Lucien’s head right now, not even the excitement of his mission, just the fear of being caught by people who will halt his duties to pretend like they give a shit about him when it’s only them trying to spare themselves from the agony of loss. He tries to shake the feeling, but soon it becomes like an energy drink, urging him to proceed faster than ever to his grave, and though drugs are a tricky weapon, this paranoia one is pretty convincing.

The closet calls out to Lucien from its tidy spot by the door, closest to would be my side of the bed and farthest from the window where the stray cat hasn’t appeared yet this morning, and immediately Lucien ambles over to it as if he’s an instinctual neanderthal and the closet is a delectable ration unseen for weeks.

Peeling the closet’s double doors away from each other like he’s a cartoon princess in the middle of a song about how their life is changing for the better bursting onto their first world balcony, an array of clothes bloom in front of Lucien’s bloodshot eyes, some of which is mine and most of which is his, because somehow this disheveled mess thinks fashion is the key to persuasion if you play it right.

Over the months of living by himself in this ruddy old apartment after skipping college and toting his dagger of a middle finger everywhere that bigots could find him, Lucien has amassed quite the stock of clothing articles, confident of each and every one. For relaxed days of sipping tea on the weekend without his library manager to scold him, he has selected sweaters and spunky t-shirts regarding grammar and philosophy (which his relatives all abhor, especially because he takes such pride in them), sometimes flannels if he’s recently bought a candle that sets the mood for it, as he’s all about aesthetics. On other occasions, Lucien prefers dress vests and dress shirts, which he often times unbuttons a bit like the heartthrob of a pirate movie, and this getup is usually accompanied by a tie when the shirt is fully intact, fabricating a gentleman out of a wreck.

All of these items could be potentially useful in Lucien’s mission, but nothing screams out to him like the ties do, each of varying colors and patterns and materials but each of the same capacity to kill, strangle, pen the last pages of the novel that is Lucien’s life, exactly what he needs now that an old flame has burnt him, and before he even realizes it his hands are grasping at the items, snaring them from the hangers and drawing them in to him as if they’ll depart if he doesn’t.

Ties are the perfect weapon, because with all of this paranoia blanketing the artifacts of Lucien’s mind, he can’t be caught ripping up bedsheets when he’s not a self-proclaimed artist, as anyone could decrypt their purpose, primarily after Lucien’s recent attitude. The noise of tearing sheets is a sonorous one, one that would alert his roommate to the soon to be murder scene, which is the event that has been clogging Lucien’s brain since he ventured out on his quest for suicide. In addition, if Lucien decides that he doesn’t want to go through with this after destroying the bedsheets, his roommate will be more suspicious of him and will probably have him on suicide watch by the end of the hour. Ties, on the contrary, hold an excuse that is admittedly rather wobbly but more plausible than the bedsheets. Lucien could claim that he’s assessing how many ties he owns after perusing the shelves of his closet and noticing that he sure as hell has a lot, and this behavior is somewhat normal for the man, as Lucien is erratic and living his entire life out of the box, so his actions shouldn’t be that questionable in relation to every other wild thing he’s done.

Calmed by this notion, a wave of paranoia drips from his cognition (though still stationing the majority of it in his mind just in case), and Lucien instantaneously is relieved of the kickdrum firing relentless in his heart.

Expeditiously, he assembles the ties into a line, fastening the ends of each together and tugging on every knot to assure himself that they’re secure and won’t tremble and fail him when he needs them the most, and soon enough there’s a train of about fourteen ties, his favorite number and far from coincidentally, a quite impressive lot that reeks of Lucien’s mismatched aestheticism that he says broadens the world both in its courage to be unconventional amidst its peers and the courage to be unconventional in a set of beauty.

When everything seems to be in order, Lucien gathers the ties in his arms with the intentions of then slithering them over his neck like a snake ready to kill him with its venom, but before he can follow through with that action, his plan is thwarted by none other than the roommate who cares too much.

I have no idea what I’m witnessing, if I should even ask when I know that Lucien will only accuse me of intruding on everything, but from the looks of it he’s too shocked to form any expression besides that of a deer in the headlights, and this minor detail about him suggests that he was doing something that he shouldn’t have been doing, and one way or another I’ll find out about it.

Lucien is cryptic enough that his motives remain vague no matter what, reveling in this crypticness and never telling me what the hell it is that he’s engaging in, or if it’s even safe by his own numb standards, but he doesn’t have to tell me anything this time around, because I’m fairly certain that I can conjecture what he’s building here, and it’s not so jovial.

My astonishment orchestrates a gasp in my lungs, glues a hand to my mouth as I stare surprised at the mess on the bedroom floor who still hasn’t recovered, and through this all I can only shape one sentence that sums everything up pretty well, a sentence that pains me to say. “You’re sick, Lucien.”

All my companion does is install a narrow tunnel into his eyes, a conviction like no other. “Isn’t every writer?”

“Not every writer tries to hang themselves with their fucking ties, Lucien,” I scold him, alternating between distress and the lion soul of a mother. “When will you understand that this isn’t normal, even if lots of writers endure it?”

Many writers are forced to trudge through the hell of depression and attempted suicide, and those excursions flavor their words with realism, but that’s something one can accomplish only if they are alive, not if their suicide succeeds. It is well known throughout the worldwide community of writers that melancholy is like the pervitin of literature, but any overdose is horrifying and unbalanced, ruining the vibe, an Lucien should know this, as he’s the master of proportions and psychology. This is simple, especially to him, yet Lucien can’t seem to understand it for whatever reason, and I don’t know if he ever will.

“This is just expanding my world, Allen, nothing more.”

I can’t remember the days when Lucien was actually influential over my disposition towards him. He used to be able to expel credible excuses, but, like his body and mind, that ability is deteriorating, and he’s left with the shoddy inheritance of words riddled with bullet holes from a father dead in a war, but everyone who has ever met Lucien Carr knows that he is as intractable as a bull moose and as thrifty as nature, so he makes do with what he has, no matter how scrappy it is.

“Dying _ends_ your world. That’s something even a kindergartener can comprehend, and you constantly show that you know more than a kindergartener, so why can’t you get this through your fucking head?”

Unwilling to retract his opinion like always, Lucien shrugs. “Well dying is an experience, so by definition it can broaden one’s existence.”

Lucien is so stubborn that he will not back down from anything, including death, and I’m not sure if I can help him any longer. Maybe he’s just doomed, and maybe he’s written a tragedy for himself, and maybe his story will be adapted into a play in which people can misinterpret his ambitions as rigorously as they please as I, the old hermit who actually knew the man, scowls at the back of the theater with the pointless knowledge that he preferred tea over coffee and that he always felt the most alive on Sundays during church hours and that he would rather be forgotten than artificialized but has been ignored by the new proprietors of his tale, and all of that is unbearable to me, because I won’t even retain the courage to speak up about the injustices draped upon a man who deserved so much more both in life and in the afterlife of unchallenged fallacy.

And in theory, all of this is avoidable if I could just reach out to Lucien, but God knows he’d never allow me to do anything close to that, and one day soon he’ll die after prolonging this morose attitude, expressionless even while choking, and I am certain that he won’t regret the fact that I’ll blame myself for his adamancy and meander through the conflicting emotions layered right after each other so that they can trick me and never clash, something I am totally unprepared for, but Lucien doesn’t care. He’s never cared, but he made _me_ care, and I’m really starting to hate psychology.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: this is all moving so quickly but shit Lucien sure as hell is impulsive so
> 
> materialism: the only thing that truly exists is matter
> 
> ~Dakotrapqueen


	40. I'm 10 and I see this???

If it were really my choice, I would not be so overprotective of Lucien. I would allow him to keep secrets as long as they didn’t cost him his health, and I would allow him to do as he pleases without hurting himself, and I would allow him to be left alone in the house without me worrying constantly about his safety, but as I said, that’s only hypothetical. The truth is that I really don’t have a choice, because my mind is both paranoid about my roommate and somewhat justified in that paranoia, as Lucien is weathering away quicker than anyone I’ve seen before, and it’s not just a theory that’s urging me towards that route of distress, for I now have evidence that I’m not being a hover parent just for the sake of being a hover parent, rather that I walked in on my roommate trying to hang himself with dress ties of all things, which is a clear indicator that he should not be left alone when the last time that occurred he was on the trail of death.

And though I promised myself never to abandon him when he needs help the most, backed by my paranoia’s influence over my decisions, I have found myself wandering around the apartment again, like I did when I woke up on the first morning in Lucien’s captivity, because _he_ has found himself asleep on the boat of rest, which is something he deserves after a strenuous day of attempted suicide with unconventional tactics and near success, and while I realize that Lucien could rise at any time and continue with his thirst for death, I don’t think he’s energized enough to do so, and I can conjecture that by two o’clock in the afternoon his angelic face will still be nestled into the pillow with no hope of digging him out of it, so I should be safe to meander through the piles of clutter Lucien has amassed over the years.

I have no goal in mind, having devoted my thoughts solely to worrying about Lucien, an activity that will surely inject premature wrinkles onto a face that looks old enough to be thirty when I’m seven years younger, so I am able to choose whatever I want to choose, as there are so many intriguing curios scattered across the carpet and furniture of an unkempt hovel awaiting the talons of the Homeowners Association, though at some times they’re a bit overwhelming to an intermittent neat freak like me. However, the last time I was wandering around the apartment was the time where I cleaned up, and cleaning has never been a diminisher of my stress unless the stress originated from how cluttered a space is, and I’ve become lazy without my article writing on a blog that’s overflowing with comments I never want to check, so cleaning will not be my forte this morning, which may partially be attributed to the fact that I haven’t chugged any coffee yet and have decided that a natural awakening by surprise should be a suitable alternative to a suckerpunch of caffeine.

As Lucien preaches endlessly, granting yourself a free ride around life with no determined destination is much more fun than strictly scheduling your life in a way that has mechanically confined how broad your life could be, and everyone knows how much Lucien loves to broaden his life, a doctrine that has developed into the spontaneity I used to adore but the spontaneity that is wracking my brain with fear this week, but I shouldn’t be focused on him while I’m weaving through the apartment, because that’s just limiting my life, and he would also hate for me to be overly concerned with his every move when it feels as though I’m always watching him, so I return to my search for something stimulating.

There’s nothing here that catches my eye like a clue highlighted with blinding glimmers in a video game, just as there was nothing when I scoured the place for the first time, only kisses of memories dotting the room that mean a lot to Lucien but nothing to me and have been dulled to monotony in my perception, but it’s not like everything in life will simply call out to me, meaning I have to reach out and explore items with trial and error the most prominent tools in my work belt.

I select a pile at the back of the room, where both the secrets and the accidental victims of elbow pushing hide amidst the cobwebs and the oblivion, ushered into the dark, into the core of one’s mental vault where only a drill could reach them, and I can detect from the start that this will be a interesting pile, judging from the material comprising it, polaroids and letters and printed photographs that I can deduce are from a while back with their sunspots and fading and fragility, oddly like human skin depicting the lives of those humans in documents prone to misinterpretation by those who have not wept at their significance as they flake with age and chug farther away from the memories, and I understand that viewing these documents makes me no better than fallacious theater students narrating a play about someone whose ambitions they know not, but I can’t be bothered to give a shit anymore when everything is on the line, now can I?

So completely abandoning my morals like I’ve been force fed methamphetamines for producing beautiful words, I roll over the first item on the pile, a photograph better preserved than the others in the mismatch heap, a photograph of a familiar face with a face that’s unfamiliar yet intimate with the familiar one, an old friend to someone I know yet a stranger to me, and the entire phenomenon of resemblance is so unnerving to me, because here we have what I assume is sixteen year-old Lucien Carr with the man who would ruin his life, and that smile painted onto my roommate’s visage is too unfitting to ignore.

They’re reclining by a riverbed as blue as Lucien’s eyes, eyes that in this picture are more vibrant than before, eyes that have not yet witnessed the anguish of abuse, eyes that have been maintained all the way to age twenty-four but still aren’t the same, eyes that are in love but in a fleeting love, a love that will turn around and plunge a knife into his back, and all I want to do is warn him about what is to come, but this is just a photograph, and my best friend is already shattered. But in this picture, there’s no sign of that beyond what I discovered eight years later, after all of that shit lapsed into healing scars and traumatic memories. By the riverbed, there’s only jocularity and the splendor of youth experienced wholly, wobbling from one pole to the other within the span of their sixteenth year and on the high end in this picture, and Lucien looks happier, but he certainly doesn’t look freer, as both then and now they are caged by something.

At age twenty-four, Lucien is free of David and free to broaden his world as far as he pleases, but his cage is the sole memory of David, though the villain of a man has manifested in physical form once more, and he’s threatening to barge into the cage, so Lucien would now be contented with the cage of his memories, warped by levels of victimization. But at age sixteen, Lucien was free from a decade and a half long period of solitude once meeting David, with no clue that it would be the worst mistake of his life, and this version of Lucien’s cage was the events to follow. The notion that those events weren’t present in the picture is irrelevant, because I can assume that farther down this pile their tolls will materialize, will soil Lucien’s eyes with mud from careless adulthood, too busy to dispose of their issues properly.

I wonder how many times Lucien has glanced at this photo and immediately felt a blade of regret in his heart, how many times he took a chunk out of his day to just stare at it and weep with tears he positions far away from the picture because he’s still building up the courage to use it as evidence in a lawsuit that will never transpire, how many times he’s contemplated tossing it into the trashcan and hiring a construction worker to run it over with a bulldozer and never did, how many times he’s hated himself for keeping it, as if he hasn’t hated himself enough already.

I can’t ever understand what Lucien has endured, and I can’t pretend to understand, but through this lack of understanding, I can still express that I am so proud of him for trudging through it, however difficult it got at times, and although he despises me right now when all I want to do is protect him, I hope he knows how appreciative I am for his will to stay alive through harsh settings, even if he may not be alive for much longer.

Now irrevocably sickened by the photograph because of how thoroughly it harmed Lucien, I shove it back into the pile to focus on another one, proving how desperate I am for information despite being hurt by what happens when I finally receive it.

The next item I lure out of the hell of Lucien’s corporeal memories is not a photograph, rather a letter printed on something a bit larger than a sticky note, short and simple and packed with excuses, and from it I can decipher that David Kammerer hasn’t changed one bit from his pity session on the answering machine from yesterday. The letter dictates that David is apparently sorry for leaving Lucien for a week without saying goodbye or writing to him at all, not one call to Lucien’s house where he was waiting anxiously with the possibility of David’s death creeping in from the back, and that must’ve been torturous to him, even if David would later abuse him, because at one point they were happy with each other, and to be deserted without a warning is a terrible fate, as there is no knowledge of when that person will be back, if they will return at all.

I love Lucien too much to bear this, so I throw the letter back down on the pile and, as a result, disperse most of the items to different areas, splayed like an elegant woman’s fan, and once I recognize that I can’t reassemble it exactly like it was before, I pray that I’ll forget this and that Lucien won’t notice the disruption I stirred in his apartment.

But I shouldn’t trust Lucien on not being keen, and I smell smoke and burning paper in the chimney by night.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: ooh I just love taking trips down memory lane because I obviously go outside haha relatable I love the outdoors :))))
> 
> mechanism: that all natural things can be explained by physical causes
> 
> ~Dakotiller


	41. run me over papi

If I were not rattled from my late night tea session with myself (and a lack of other companions to join me from their sulking) by the fragrance of flames and their ashy spit, then I would not have known that Lucien had noticed my excavation dig of his terrible memories from when he was sixteen years old and decided to dispose of them because they were really that terrible, and I don’t blame him, to be honest.

A lot can change in eight years, including one’s impression of another, one’s impression of strangers, and one’s impression as the world as a whole, and though Lucien is a man to highlight his past, he only highlights it when it suits him, not when it beat him to a pulp and made sure he survived just near a flatline for the collateral that will last forever, just hanging on by a string that he wish he could either snap or climb if it were possible. The most average of men will only showcase their accomplishments and hide their faults, but Lucien Carr is far from average, yet he still hopes to deify himself no matter what, going to great lengths just to preserve how other people see him, and now that he’s crumbling, that’s becoming increasingly difficult.

Despite being extremely stubborn to the point where I cannot persuade him to my side of any claim, Lucien is somehow not diligent enough to hide the extent at which he is falling apart, which may be a side effect of that weathering. I would’ve thought he would be more desperate to conceal any emotion that is shamed by society when it is only as flagrant as tears, but all he does to cloak the fact that he’s dying is tell me that I’m being nosy and that nothing is wrong with him, when he constantly talks about how true writers noted for their passion are never okay, because passion is derived from experience, and emotions are a living hell.

So I went to bed without another word about it, because if I offered any, they would be scorned just like they would be scorned at any other time in the day, and that was that, and I suppose it was a mistake to leave Lucien unsupervised, but I believe he’s had enough, and I’ve done too much for him.

But as Lucien awakes with a sort of drugged up heaven in his lungs, all of his goals have been diminished, the last fragments whose majority was stolen by depression now stolen entirely, in order to leave one last thing on which to focus: leaving the apartment without being caught.

With that choice already deep in his mind, he can only say goodbye as his last parting, the best thing he can do. Eyes thatched with concern, he sweeps his vision over my slumbering figure unaware of what is about to transpire, and he leans down to deposit a final kiss in the thicket of my hickory hair. I subconsciously reach towards him, discharging the tiniest of sounds, but Lucien wills himself to proceed and abandon me.

It appears that now all Lucien wants to do is not be caught in the act of doing something he shouldn’t be doing, which he probably should be caught in doing so someone can protect him from its repercussions, but Lucien is as intractable as ever and won’t settle for protection when his mind is a criminal perpetually on the loose and is unable to be detained by anyone except the owner of that mind who arguably doesn’t own it anymore, and it seems that Lucien is too weak to detain that criminal, so his life has been flipped into a pan of hecticness and disorder until he can only stick to one goal at a time, and he will do anything to achieve it.

Lucien knows every inch of this house, has carved his possessions into it with a meticulous guard so that he can locate everything and pretend as though he isn’t obsessive about it, and because he knows every inch of this house, he knows where it moans under his feet, where it screeches against his touch, where the noises reverberate from and can give him away as he slips out of the house without the knowledge of the roommate who is quietly slumbering in the other room. Lucien knows both how to play the instrument of this apartment and how to mute it, a skill that is quite unnerving to his roommate, because it can ensure that Lucien will sneak away at one point, and that one point is now.

Lucien, a man whose personality can be described with the salient point that he loves broaden his life, loves to explore as well, and it is through this that he can locate every nook and cranny in an area once studying it enough, a much shorter process than people unlike him, and while some people would admit through teeth barred by politeness that they don’t think it’s a useful skill, others are amazed to see how handily Lucien utilizes it, and he’s utilizing it now, in a life or death situation in which he shouldn’t be but is because he follows the stream he constructed for himself, not the stream already there that expects him to feed off of it as if he’s desperate, and right now he _is_ desperate, so his skills are aiding him in releasing himself of that desperation in the only way he sees possible, the only way he wants to follow through with.

Of course, he wouldn’t have to be utilizing his skills of exploration in this way if they were adept enough to solve the crux of his melancholy, meaning if they were adept enough to locate where Lucien’s mind has gone, then he could help himself regain it and wouldn’t now be utilizing his skills to sneak out of the apartment to fucking kill himself, but wishful thinking is only supported by the man when one intends to act upon those wishes, so the location of his brain is ultimately rejected by what is felt in his soul.

The apartment is dark, the moon sighing heavily into the air yet never blowing its tendrils of light towards the building, making Lucien’s task of escaping the house all the more arduous when he can’t see for shit, so he decides to flee the house without grabbing so much as a jacket to instead parade through the streets in shorts and a t-shirt as thin as his patience with life.

No one is walking outside at the moment and probably won’t be until it’s the day, which is understandable for the time of one o’clock in the morning when the rational people are all sleeping in comfort and not making mistakes as a danger to society like Lucien is. There is only the stray car zooming past yet not as quickly as they would if it were light outside, like they’re cautious of the secrets lurking in the ebony dust of night, and maybe they should be, as there’s about to be a tragedy draped like a proud banner in the halls of Paterson history.

The street looks immaculate today, perhaps too immaculate, devoid of the usual trash, undisturbed by rain water, blank of the leaves that are cascading to the ground all throughout the fall but not on this street for some reason, and it’s not so much that the street is too clean, just that it doesn’t feel right, like an inexplicable wrestling match in your stomach, but that can easily be remedied with blood upon its melanoid textiles, no? That offers a sort of balance, an accent well adjusted to black and all dark colors, a streak to stir up conversation, a solution to all of Lucien Carr’s problems.

There are rarely any escapes as fulfilling as this one, as they solve each and every one of Lucien’s issues by killing him instantly with the murder weapon an oncoming car, and maybe it’s cruel to shove a manslaughter or a straight up murder charge on someone he doesn’t even know, but that’s the least of his concerns when he’s dead, and he doesn’t believe in any afterlife except for the worms wriggling their way into one’s casket, knocking and knocking and crawling where they don’t belong, but Lucien doesn’t belong here, either, so fuck the consequences, right? That’s a bit of a consolation to someone who needs it but rarely ever receives it, with all of the falsifications shoved onto him that he’s supposed to accept, that don’t mean a thing to him, that are only displayed so that the giver can pretend like they did something in the world in order to soothe their guilty conscience, a typical human being as sordid as the rest of them.

Stepping in front of a car makes one’s death seem like an accident, which may be true if it actually were an accident, but Lucien has been set on suicide since David Kammerer, a heartthrob turned to an abuser, returned to Lucien’s life and set him off like a ticking time bomb, and in a few minutes his time will be up. But since Lucien is so opposed to letting people know that he’s not all right, despite showing clear signs of depression and paranoia, stepping in front of a car will alert the public to the lie that it wasn’t his fault, rather the fault of the driver that will hit him, however cruel and unfair that is to someone who just happened to get caught up in an assisted suicide, because it’s what Lucien needs to assure his few friends that he was doing fine and was only struck inadvertently.

The mourning style is different, too, and though Lucien hates mourning of any type, claims it to be a waste of time for people that won’t come back from the grave or wherever they are in the pursuit of a happier life without the selfish person that wants them back, Lucien would prefer the mourning style of a car accident, because the stigma, if any, will be redirected towards someone else instead of him. There will be no one, except maybe Lucien’s roommate, that will blame it on suicide and spew out those pointless, bigoted phrases about the inverted mortality phenomenon. Lucien hates anyone who would willingly show up to his funeral to insist on that futile mourning, but he cares about his roommate enough to step in front of a car so I don’t have to spend the rest of my life wondering why the hell he killed himself and if it was me who urged him towards it, as if that should be my first arrogant concern when my friend is about to fucking die intentionally, when that death has been the prospect to which he’s been looking forward since a few days ago and hasn’t ceased looking forward even now.

And because Lucien is up to his knees in excitement, a sentiment that is growing still, it is strenuous to wait for a car to race by, a car that he can narrowly jump in front of to perhaps lessen the driver’s criminal sentence from murder to manslaughter as if they deserve either one. Almost three minutes pass before Lucien spots a car humming in a dilatory ballad in the distance, three minutes caked with apprehension and the slightest nuance in Lucien’s decision about whether he wants to experience the vibrancy of life or have all feeling of anything wiped away permanently, nuances that are overruled every time but continue to scratch at the door to Lucien’s cognition.

The car nears him, the driver totally unaware that they are about to be restrained in a lawsuit regarding a person they don’t know the first thing about, but soon they _will_ be aware...very soon, in fact, in about three seconds, and in those three seconds, life bursts with its enchanting color, everything under the sun and everything destined to destroy it, everything pulling and grasping and releasing all at once, hands cupping items as they too are cupped, an infinite string of proportional relativity, all aspects of time and matter packed into three seconds, right before Lucien delivers the move to end it all.

There is no hesitation as Lucien seizes what he has yearned for since the ripe age of sixteen, all piecing together like a puzzle that started out as nothing but a desire, now an elegant display of accomplishment, of drifting into the darkness whose hue is imaginary yet vivid like nothing Lucien has ever seen before, like no living human has ever seen before, but there’s no time to contemplate this, as it’s all over now.

He cannot see himself anymore, his identity stripped away, but he can see who he used to be, first charming and then a mess and then charming and then a mess again, like his life is a repetitive cycle of delineated ups and downs instead of random fluctuations in the grid of time, but that life is through, with the contact of metal upon flesh, mistake upon mistake, cause upon effect, manslaughter upon remedy, everything Lucien needs.

 _“Turn out the lights now, Lucien, honey.”_ A soft voice, puckered by the sourness of amnesia yet sweet as ever, like clenching a bit of the past and furling it into a heart.

_“Okay.”_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I've been fortified against the death threats my writing causes so whatever just bring it on and make it interesting
> 
> monism: the belief that there is only one principle of life
> 
> ~Dakotattle-tale


	42. Part Five

**Part Five**

_ When winter subsides to spring, we know that only a handful of sinners have survived the cold. _

Song: the Pioneers M83 Remix by Bloc Party


	43. ring ring it's satan

Tonight is the best night night I’ve experienced in a very long time (which is an immediate turn off to doctors all across the world, painting me as one of those online ads with the slogans “doctors hate him” printed boldly next to my disheveled picture), the night that I am finally content with the extent at which I am sailing through the misty waters upon the sailboat of sleep, far from the horizon of waking up and facing the harsh reality where my best friend is falling apart right before my eyes, but my eyes are shut right now and hopefully will be shut for a few more hours, fucking both my hatred of people sleeping in so that half of their day is wasted on unconsciousness, and my overprotective concern with my roommate who conceivably is sleeping right next to me, and if not then he’s silently screaming about his vivid nightmares and benignly not waking me to talk about them, and while I should be helping him, as that’s what I’ve been so relentlessly doing for the past few days, I have barely allotted myself time to relax in a field in which everyone should be able to relax, like, every fucking night in order to keep them alive, and I shouldn’t really bother with Lucien when he would reject my services anyway, so sleep is far more productive than reaching for something ten feet above me when there is no taller person to aid me in my endeavors.

And it’s a fucking spectacular feeling to just sink into all the pleasant sensations in life, sleeping for as long as I please when earlier I pleased to stay awake for as long as possible to make sure that my friend wasn’t off killing himself, but he should be fine, as he so rigorously assures me every time I even glance at him with no malignant intentions whatsoever, which may be a lie, but I’m not going to push him into a state of increased melancholy, more so than before, when I could be enjoying myself in the only comforting place I’ve found since the persistent David Kammerer appeared back in Lucien’s life and flipped everything upside down with his incessant begging, a pathetic little thing unworthy of my roommate’s attention, and I can only pray that with my recovery from sleep deprivation will come Lucien’s recovery from his long lost nightmare, but that’s just a wish when anything is possible in the productions of sleep, a natural psychedelic for all humans.

It’s just so nice to be resting here, head conceivably nestled into the pillow like it’s glued onto me with an adhesive like no other, not giving a shit about anything except the visions buzzing inside my brain that are fortunately the opposite of what _usually_ buzzes through my brain, and I could stay here forever if I didn’t have a friend to look after.

And that’s all going splendidly, and I really wish it would never stop, but it does, and all of the sudden I find myself snapped back into the cruel remains of what could be, the hangover from a night of the heavy drugs called dreaming, but to my surprise the sky is still stained with ash and pollution and the occasional pin of fire, signaling that it remains to be late into the night when I thought it would be late into the morning. I really have been deprived of sleep, and it’s gotten to the point where a few hours of rest is what my brain thinks is a full cycle of it.

Unsure of exactly what time it is, the digital clock resting on Lucien’s side of the bed blares that it’s around one and a quarter in the morning, worthy of the sky’s current hue, but that’s all of the sudden not my biggest concern. My biggest concern is that the clock is on Lucien’s side of the bed, but _Lucien_ isn’t on Lucien’s side of the bed, where he should be.

Now, he is a man prone to exploring and wandering when he cannot fall back asleep, but with the current state of things his intentions can’t help but be deciphered as more sinister than it would seem to the rest of the world, as he could be of doing a who knows what that is destructive enough to fatally wound my best friend, all on purpose and all derived from his full fledged hatred of existing.

He does whatever he chooses, no matter how dangerous it is to his health and to other people’s health, both mental and physical, just aiming for something to occupy him, something to divide his mind from the troubles of his personal world. What he’s doing is deceptive in order to preserve himself in a lie that seems almost beneficial, like turning all his watches to five o’clock so that it’s happy hour for as long as he wants it to be, and he still hasn’t figured out that it will never work, that he will forever be on the infinite road of pain unless he receives the help with which I’ve been supplying him unsuccessfully.

I don’t even know if checking on him will be fruitful, because he’d hate my motives if he were ever to find them out, being absolutely appalled that I would think he’s contemplating suicide when that’s exactly what his attitude suggests, but I must do it, and discreetly so, and with that decision rooted into my head for a love towards my companion, I tumble out of bed with all of my might that would beseech me otherwise, and stalk out of the bedroom on the pursuit for Lucien.

Instead, I find the worst, what was lurking in the back of my mind when I first saw that Lucien was missing from the bed, and that worst is that he really is missing, missing from everywhere in the house. He could be on the fucking streets at one o’clock in the morning, doing something dangerous, no doubt, and I have no idea where he could possibly be, and that fucking terrifies me. It should terrify _any_ friend, but this matter is emphasized by the fact that Lucien, a man of many talents that should not be wasted but are going to be wasted, is definitely out for the release of suicide, and it’s no secret that the suicidal hide their desire to die from everyone except themselves, whom they blast with it constantly until it’s as important to them as food and water and all things that they won’t need when they’ve finally achieved that desire, and I can’t fucking allow this to happen. I can’t, not after everything I’ve done to protect Lucien when I thought it would end in the other way around.

My movements are hectic now, deployed with the mission of locating my best friend that I can already tell isn’t here and hasn’t been here for a while, but I’m just fucking desperate, and desperation does not cease for rationality, even if it smacks you right in the face, because as much as I would love to reject the notion, Lucien has vanished and isn’t coming back at least until morning, if at all, and I will be alone for around seven hours to wonder where the hell he’s gone and why the hell he left in the first place, though that reason is quite clear.

I’m trapped within my worrying until a blaring upon the phone line distracts me from it and ushers me over to pick up the call. I almost consider not doing so, but I then realize that it is something that can occupy me from my fretting, and it might be important to where Lucien is, so with trembling extremities I lift the phone from its port and allow the sound waves to travel through me like electricity, regarded as dangerous but also regarded as a necessity.

The caller is unknown, and so is the man on the other end of the line, and all I can pick up is the shaking of that man’s breath as he prepares to deliver some news about the tragedy that has either befallen him or my roommate, and though I view myself as a kind person, I’d rather have Lucien safe than someone I don’t even know, but I shouldn’t jump to conclusions so quickly, for it is a disastrous mental ordeal as a consequence of anxiety.

Finally, the man speaks, his voice as wobbly as his breathing, and says, “U-um, are you…” — he fumbles with the name for a moment — “Allen Ginsberg?”

I opt for a few seconds of silence, shifting my grip on the phone and on my feet’s placement upon the tile, suspicious now. “Yes, how do you know me?”

He speaks quickly, uneasily. “Um, well, I don’t, actually, but you seem to be the emergency contact on this guy’s phone, and...and…” The man’s throat chips with apprehension and the salty saliva of tears, almost like he is physically unable to string together coherent sentences that deliver what is actually going on.

There’s no time to be sensitive when I am uncertain whether or not this news is good or bad, and I can only assume the latter, so I prompt rather harshly, “And what?”

“And that guy was hit by a car... _my_ car, and...there’s no way to put this lightly, but he’s...he’s dead.”

This strikes me with a fatal bat to the stomach, like all of my organs are collapsing into a heap of deflated balloons, except for my lungs, who are huffing and puffing and laboring to sustain themselves when reality is poking holes with needles into their fragile membranes, just a bodily system built on futility that is functioning only in the sense that their demise is fully operational and sweeping in as if it were the same car that killed my fucking best friend. Each day I get better at existing, but nothing could have prepared me for this blow to my personal universe, nothing in the entire world and beyond.

There are a lot of goodbyes in this world, but there are none to accommodate my current situation, so I am trapped between helplessness and frustration, because once again I am silenced without even my writing to aid me, and the silence is unbearable. I have nothing to say and probably will have nothing to say for quite a while, but there’s still this frantic man waiting anxiously on the other end of the phone who needs a quick answer, a quick answer that I cannot provide him with.

“Sir?” the man asks to make sure I’m still there and haven’t passed out in a matter of seconds following the shocking news, which I just might do if I forget about the news for a moment and then bring myself back to it in order to sincerely replicate the astonishment.

“Yes, I’m here.”

“I called the police before calling you, and they said will take your friend down to the morgue so that you can see him,” the man attempts to console me, and however gruesome it is, I do, in fact, wish to see the floppy vessel that couldn’t preserve all of Lucien’s brilliance when it decided to malfunction. “I just wanted to say that I’m sorry.”

“No, it wasn’t your fault,” I reassure the man, a back and forth exchange of comforting each other, but I’m still somewhat foggy about all of this, even if it is my duty to speak to the man that is already crumbling. “Please don’t stress about it.”

And, having had enough of the wreck of the man, I hang up the phone before I become a wreck myself, suspended only in confusion and a doubt that any of this is even real.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: the beginning of this chapter was so funny to write bc allen thought lucien was alive lmao i'm so mean
> 
> naturalism: the belief that the supernatural are distinguished from nature
> 
> ~Dakotank


	44. tea and reassurance

Even ten minutes after I hung up the phone to the guy who was just as horrified as I was at the tragedy that had befallen my best friend who could have done so much more with his life but instead opted for suicide, I was still in shock by it, floating through the delirium of numbness towards an event that should flip off every switch in rationality in my brain but hasn’t done so until now, and I’m not really sure which one is worse.

On one hand, there’s the sensation of not being able to recall anything that transpired in the past or what is transpiring now, in the real world and not the world that I have constructed entirely to drift through numbness where every fact about it is useless to what is really happening, and it’s a bit frustrating, or at least it would be if I were capable of possessing emotions in that blank state of nothingness, because my only knowledge is that of futile affairs when I need to be focusing on reality, but reality is untouchable in that state, a tantalizing heaven far away from my grasp unless something potent like death aids me in my struggles, but it is not the time for death, and thus I continue in the void of existence and emptiness gearing concurrently through my presence in whatever this sheeted world is.

On the other hand, being fully aware of the hell that is marching through my existence when I couldn’t spot them on the horizon just a moment ago is perhaps equally as terrible, though I have been unsuccessful in measuring the scale. In this realm, anxiety is choosing to strike each of my organs, one by one so as to revel in their demise and, as a result, my own demise, yet it still sustains me to study how I function when I should no longer be alive but somehow am, by an inexplicable freak of nature performed by people who wish the worst for me. When I am caught in this web of franticness, it feels as though there are a million things to be done, accompanied by the stress induced by the sharp truth that there is actually nothing that I can do whilst I blither about how I need to accomplish something impossible, accomplish something that will never fulfill me, accomplish something that will be eternally molested by my thirsting desire to control theories that cannot be controlled or are rather unwilling to be controlled by off kilter metaphysicists who will manipulate everything over which they can slide their grubby, bullshitting hands. I am suspended in an urge to act on something, but I have no idea what that something is and if it’s even attainable, yet I still continue to try to act on it like I’m an expert.

I need to stop pretending, and I need to stop comparing two different types of hell that cannot be compared with their massive disparity, and I need to stop isolating myself to the point where I cannot receive help for things that other people would bring in a whole team of specialists to solve, and no I’m not looking for a psychiatrist or some heavy drugs to pass the time — I’ve heard methamphetamines are nice, though. I just need someone onto whom I can spill my secrets (reserving the closest ones, of course), someone onto whom I can lean for balance when I am tumbling, someone onto whom I can bestow my faithful trust so that I can finally dig myself out of the pit of helplessness in which I have been living for the past twenty-three years.

Edie Parker is the perfect person for that, even if she has become wary of me since I moved in with Lucien and betrayed her confidence in me somewhat, but despite that, I can understand that she wouldn’t be joyous to know that Lucien had died right before our future conversation, and she would offer her wholehearted condolences, which I crave more than ever.

I already felt as though I was alone once Lucien dropped into his personal hell and neglected mine when I thought he was strong enough to discard his own and slot availability to help me, but now there’s no chance that Lucien could be strong when he’s dead and took the easy way out from a hard existence, though there’s always the possibility that Lucien always maintained that hell of his and was simply more adept at hiding or (or didn’t know it was so prominent until it began to speak to him), and, as harsh as it is to say it, Lucien was always a deceiving man, so he may have deceived himself, too. He certainly deceived _me_ , and now he’s dead, so I’m on the hunt for comfort, a comfort that can be found in the warm setting of Edie Parker and Jack Kerouac’s home.

All throughout the trip to their house, I am as hectic as ever, having slipped out of the tormenting state of nothingness and into the equally as tormenting state of perpetual anxiety about things that cannot be resolved, because death is permanent, and Lucien knew this, so he opted to escape through it, and that’s why I’m so desperate for Edie Parker’s assistance, as I predicted what Lucien was going to do ever since he jumped into the murky depths of the void, and I thought that would soften the blow, but oh how I was wrong. Oh how I have suffered in such a short span because of the boy I thought would always be here because he felt so self important as to do so. Oh how I tumbled from that assurance. Oh how I need help more than ever.

When I arrive on the cleanly swept front porch of Jack and Edie’s house, my lungs have been plundered for their oxygen, and there they sit, gasping for something to sustain it. I double over for a few moments to collect myself, and then I proceed with that feeling of uncertainty still fitted snugly to my stomach. In my state of urgency, I almost ring the doorbell, but, remembering Edie’s peculiar pet peeve of that action, redirect my fist to the door and punch it multiple times like I’ll be punching my pillow when the anger stage of grief finally kicks in.

Not sensing the gravity of the situation, Edie takes her time wandering towards the door, and when she opens it, it is obvious that she is completely unaware that anything could be happening, though my sole presence at her home (especially since I look so disheveled) warns her otherwise. The cardigan strung around her body is tightened by the cold of the morning, and with this action I notice that it’s only around an hour and thirty minutes into the day, when people shouldn’t be awake, but Edie is, and I suppose I should’ve considered her sleeping schedule, but I was too panicked, and she’s awake anyway.

“Allen?” Edie asks, unsure that I’m really here and if a sinister robber or creation of the dark is being disguised as me through shadowy means.

Before I explain anything, I need to get out of the cold, because the news I’m about to share will chill me even more. “C-can I come inside?”

Edie pauses for a moment, her train of thought interrupted by a request she wasn’t expecting, but she eventually comes to her senses and ushers me inside, saying, “Of course,” as her hand hovers over my back until I plop into the couch’s relaxing fabric, a comfort I crave in this time of nervousness.

“So, Allen, would you like to explain to me why you just randomly showed up at my house at one thirty in the morning?” Edie’s a bit too harsh for my fragmented soul right now, but that will all change when the sympathetic side of her heart crawls out from a veneer to prevent manipulation and listens to my claim.

A sigh drips sluggishly out of my throat, delaying my speech for as long as it can, and when it is finished I am forced to speak. “I know you aren’t really affiliated with him, and I don’t even think you ever liked him, but you’re the only one I could tell, and...and...Lucien’s dead.” My voice bends and snaps at the final verdict, but it’s a miracle that I could even expel the words at all.

I did my best, and now Edie is doing her best to try and sort through what the hell I’m talking about, the abrupt nature of this all. “What...w-what does that mean?”

It’s not that difficult to comprehend in theory, but with grief comes a distortion that settles over one’s mind for the longest of times, tricking them into thinking that their loved one will be back, but every time they come home and every time they call their favorite cell phone number and every time they think about planning a trip to somewhere they’ve always wanted to go with a companion, no one is there for them, but at least there’s some hope before the sickening drop.

I understand this phenomenon now, even if Lucien was the first person with whom I’ve experienced that phenomenon, so I guide Edie through it. “He was hit by a car about a half hour ago, and he’s being taken to the morgue.”

“Have you seen him?”

“No, and I’m still debating whether or not I want to, but that’s beside the point.” My foot scuttles against the intricate carpet that Edie bought at a fair and hasn’t relinquished since, just as a way to occupy myself while I spew out secrets about Lucien’s life and now his death. “The real point is that Lucien decided to jump in front of that car, even if I wasn’t there to see it for myself. It was suicide, Edie. It was.”

“Why would he do that? He seemed to happy both when we talked on the phone and when he came over for dinner.”

Even Edie is astonished, which proves how much Lucien rattled everyone’s world when he fucking stepped in front of a car because that’s how he thought he could solve all of his problems, but you don’t solve problems by erasing them completely. No matter how hard you try to pretend that something doesn’t exist, there will still be tangles in it as it bobs through time and existence.

“I honestly have no idea why the cause of his depression prompted him towards this route so quickly, but what I do know is that his old friend returned, an old friend that abused him when they were both sixteen, and his arrival back into Lucien’s life took a serious toll on him.”

This is when Edie breaks down, her motherly instincts extending to be a mother to everyone, now especially my dead friend named Lucien Carr who deserved so much more than he was given. Tears clip fiercely at the edges of her eyes, and her hands maneuver over her mouth to trap the sobs endeavoring to flow free. “Oh God, I’m so sorry.”

And we just hug it out until my best friend’s death is dulled.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: ugh the desperation whyhteufkc
> 
> nominalism: concepts are not objective and only exist as names
> 
> ~Dakotalon


	45. spare me, john green

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> listen to Wait by M83 if you dare....or just some other sad song
> 
> Link to Wait: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNnOH19tRGs

It’s been a week, yet nothing has changed in my grieving, except for the fact that it’s been prolonged and has offered me many more opportunities to walk into the apartment with the thought that Lucien would be here waiting for me but isn’t, not one time, because he’s dead, and that’s the permanent state he was in love with more than he was in love with me, and though every stupid self help manual will tell me that I need to move past a man who never invested his whole time in me because he liked other things above me, I simply cannot move on, because even if Lucien was not wholly invested in me, I was wholly invested in him, and he just fucking left, so now I’m hopeless and latching on to whatever I can latch on to, or else I’ll slip away into the harsh reality that Lucien has been gone and isn’t ever coming back.

Funerals are somewhat beneficial to people like me, people who can’t bear to let go, people who still think that their loved ones will be in all of the places they used to be, people who need something of a reminder to place the dead in their grave eternally, and as much as Lucien and I detest funerals, Edie and Jack offered to pay for it with however much money they earn at work (I at least know that it’s rude to inquire about people’s monetary statuses, if I don’t know any other points of social etiquette), and I don’t want to turn down their proposal just because I’m a poor sport who denies other people the right to mourn the person they didn’t know half as well as I did, and I didn’t even know him that well, either, so it seems absurd that they should pretend to be so distraught by Lucien’s death that they would dampen the ground with their tears as if there were a rainstorm the night before. However, I cannot stop people from hosting a funeral, especially when they’re the ones paying for it, and if I told them of my concerns, they wouldn’t give a shit and would label me as a socially inept heretic who should not be trusted with these weighted topics when I know more about them than they do, being a proud metaphysicist, so I keep silent and allow Edie to endlessly fix the position of my tie, an itchy thing resting upon my neck that makes me feel as though I’m suffocating, makes me feel like Lucien on that one day when I stumbled in on him trying to fucking hang himself, and I really don’t want to be connected to one of Lucien’s low points when we’re honoring his absolute lowest, but I know I can’t say anything about this too and might as well just gag myself with this tie.

Edie had been working for the entire week on preparing Lucien’s funeral, and I admire her perpetual diligence, but there’s no denying that I wish she hadn’t worked so hard on something I could do without, because funerals are just lost time spent trying to forget someone that, like every regular human, pleaded to be remembered in history or in at least their best friend’s minds like they’d always be there for them, because that’s something of a consolation to someone who cannot feel now that they are six feet under, where the only thing they could _potentially_ feel is the icy fingers of the dirt surrounding them, taunting the corpse and threatening to break through as bits of themselves do so, That’s Lucien’s fate, and while he wanted to be remembered in history, he abhorred funerals with every piece of him, every piece that people would admire after his death but scorned while he was still alive, demonstrating the sweet irony of humans and how they wish to act as though they ever gave a fuck so as to avoid the label of “cruel” or “cavalier” or “you should go and die, too”. I don’t want to go to this funeral, this session of that same doctrine that Lucien left untouched for hatred of it, and I want to abide by what Lucien would’ve done if he could schedule his own funeral, or lack thereof, considering he hates these public displays of fallacy that the world has not yet shamed for their faults, but Edie does not understand the hypocrisies and the falsifications of this odd planet, and she is forcing me to partake in a sort of latent torture about which she has no idea and would reprimand me for believing in.

So here we are, clad in a hue as black as Lucien’s rotting soul and the coffin in which that soul is rotting, preparing ourselves for when the guests arrive to participate in something mundane yet something universally accepted as a proper way to dispose of your grief in a collective pool of other people with the same intentions, instead of disposing of it safely with a natural route of affirmation, and I can’t deal with this any longer. I just want this funeral to be over, for this funeral to get out of Lucien’s way, for this funeral to burn in the minds of people who usually rely on them to snatch away grief that they should be the ones to snatch away.

Edie scheduled the funeral at nine o’clock in the morning on a gloomy Monday, the most common day of the week for a funeral, which may or may not have been a coincidence. She chose to hold Lucien’s coffin right in front of the stage where I will be performing a eulogy that I haven’t even written (I’m just planning on improvising, despite my anxiety even when I _have_ a speech, but Lucien is close enough to my heart that I can speak straight from it and occupy the audience sufficiently, hopefully injecting tears into their eyes, not from the grief, but from my ostentatious writing style), but Edie has no idea that I haven’t written this eulogy, and it is my faith that she will not find out until afterwards, when she cannot scold me for being so unprepared, as if loss does not do that to a person, but she might be too engrossed in loss as well to notice, too engrossed in pouring out her tears over Lucien’s coffin, which she will open right before the funeral begins and the crying begins with it.

The first person to step through the gates towards the funeral isn’t anyone I’ve seen before, and I almost question him to see if he’s lost or if he just came rather boldly to investigate, but it then occurs to me that, while he may not have been invited, he heard through the grapevine that a funeral was being held for a person he doesn’t know anything about but knows still. This man is the man who inadvertently aided Lucien in his desire for suicide. I don’t blame him for it, but it’s obvious that he blames himself, enough so to show up at this funeral with that anxious countenance of his soiling every aspect of his movement, and because of that anxiety I don’t decide to question him like I would’ve before, only allow him to take a seat in a plastic chair at the back of the sea of white.

A few more people enter into the funeral grounds, making for our small ceremony because of how isolated Lucien was throughout his entire life, which reminds me of when I took him out to lunch the same day I moved in with him and he played a one sided game of staring at me until I cracked, a judgment about his character that suggests he selects his friends carefully, and I am so delighted to be one of them, even if he didn’t stick around for me in the end, because I suppose he only needed friends to either amuse him or assist him, despite pushing me away when he needed the most assistance and landing in this trouble. But it seems that he made a few friends, and perhaps the most shocking of the guests is Lucien’s manager from the library, who just about hated him for how deftly he sneaked out of punishment by being one minute early and not even technically cheating the system, and that manager looks as morose as the rest of the guests.

The next person to enter is not just one person, rather two. I have also never seen them before, just like the man who ran over my friend accidentally, but with their arms looped around each other, the expression of grief that cuts straight to the core of one’s heart, and the resemblance to my roommate, I can only assume that they are Lucien’s parents, venturing all the way from St. Louis where Lucien grew up after moving from New York City when he was only five years old. Even though Lucien would’ve begged never to see his parents again, it’s still heartbreaking to know that he hasn’t greeted them since the adventurous age of eighteen and died without their immediate knowledge. It was only after Edie must’ve called them that they knew about their son’s death, and now they’re here to honor him, however falsely.

I leap from the stage to greet them like Lucien hasn’t done in six years, and I take them a bit by surprise when I step right into their vision to examine how they’re holding up after receiving the horrible news that the person they spent eighteen years caring for has now wasted that enrichment to instead fly through the air on the bow of a car that belongs to someone he doesn’t even know. It’s not that they’re weeping, collecting buckets upon buckets of their tears, and it’s not like they have suppressed their emotion, just that their emotion manifests in a form different from the rest. It is evident that they are affected so deeply by their loss that their entire body has morphed to accommodate it, like they are no longer humans, rather vessels for lachrymosity, but they are doing their best to interact with people who have not felt the same pain.

This is an odd sort of pain, only visible within the souls of the deceased’s parents, and not even I can compare to it. I met Lucien only a bit ago out of pure chance, but Lucien’s parents have known him for as long as he has been alive, and they chose to bring him into this world so that they could offer him their unconditional love, and though Lucien struggled in this world, they would’ve been perpetually willing to help him through it if they were the good parents we writers all dream of after the fact. From Lucien’s character and the realization of the notion that childhood shapes that character, his parents may not have been superstars, but deep down they care for him, and now that care has emerged upon their wrinkled facades.

“Thank you for coming,” is all I can say before Mr. Carr engulfs me in his embrace, tighter than any embrace I’ve experienced and shaped by the gravity of the situation, and Mrs. Carr stands back from the position with the saddest of inks staining her face until it is time for me to move on, Edie waving her hand for me to step onto the stage and perform my improvised eulogy that she has no clue is improvised.

Every time my feet carve their imprints into the grass of the funeral site towards the stage, it feels as though it is a heartbeat blaring in my ears, sickening to my misophonic nature yet unwilling to depart so that I can be further tortured in a time where torture reigns above us all in this shadowed cemetery on a Monday morning, and even when I am not moving, now positioned upon the stage with my hands gripping the microphone as if it will fly away if I don’t, the feeling is still drumming in my ears.

The funeral guests wait patiently to hear what I have to say, and as I look out over them, I lose my train of thought completely. Their faces are so forlorn, so devoid of the happiness that they may have retained while they were unaware that their friend, no matter how distant, has died recently, and they must’ve been met with that same blow I was met with, even if it wasn’t as heavy as mine, but I force myself to continue in honor of them, despite not owing them a single penny or a single flask of my attention.

Not having prepared a speech to soothe the worries of everyone around me as they glance back at forth between my dead friend and me, that offers an opportunity to speak directly from the soul instead of soaking a piece of paper in artificiality meant to spare the guests from what I truly think about the brilliant Lucien Carr and his passing, but Lucien taught me that writing should not be edited for anyone else but yourself. Writing is perfect from the moment it leaves your mind, because it is a portion of yourself that has been expelled in corporeal form, and that is magical on its own.

A sigh blocks my words from their flight until it has passed through my windpipe, and the I continue. “Usually I hate funerals, and I still do, in fact,” I admit, which is somewhat of a controversial thing to say when I hold the power to say whatever the hell I want and usher tears of cruelty from the audience’s eyes, but it’s the goddamn truth, and that’s what Lucien would have opted for me to present. “However, I can’t be so spiteful at the funeral of my best friend, as this is the only funeral he’ll receive, and he is a man deserving of so much, so it’s time for all of us to stow away any doubts about him to instead listen to the real truth about the brilliant metaphysicist we know as Lucien Carr.”

The audience is attentive, drinking up the brutal honesty of my eulogy like it’s benzedrine because they hate how much they crave the harshness, and it seems to be going well, seems to be tricking everyone into thinking that I am fluent in what I have to say, but there is so much that I _could_ say, though there is not enough time to say it and not enough room in my brain to even store it, so I flush it out here and now to focus on the bits that people need to hear so that they don’t view Lucien Carr as a man to be despised, his funeral only a pity party to add to their list of virtuous deeds, and it’s my job to ensure that he is adored just as much as he should be adored, because I sure as hell loved him with everything I had.

“From the first time I saw him, I was instantly entranced. I knew nothing about the beautiful librarian sitting behind his desk reading about homosexuality in Greek mythology, a topic that immediately pointed me towards the boldness of his character, but I was helplessly fixed on him anyway, like an area I craved only because he hadn’t yet been explored, his insides left untouched, his ideas hushed to only exist in his mind as a little secret he shared with himself, and that was absolutely alluring to me.” A smile tackles my lips at the memory of this day, lightening the mood of the funeral a bit, as the audience mirrors my nostalgic joy. “I was just a lonely blogger on the hunt for a book about rhyme and meter, and I stumbled upon a man that made me so much more than that.”

In my temporal rest, I spy Mrs. Carr flicking a tear from her eyes, mascara fleeing down the roads of her aging cheeks who have seen so much, of both her own life and the life of her son that has been cut short by the iniquity of the world. She strived to make Lucien the best he could be, even if he rejected her, and my opening phrases have elucidated that he was just as magnificent as she had hoped, and my heart balloons with glee that I could’ve shown her that. I am so grateful to her for all that she has done in shaping the better parts of Lucien, the eccentricity and the extraordinary imagination of his, so it pains me to realize that her work has been squandered on a boy whose potential could’ve molded the entire world but ceased with death before it could, and to honor her my focus clips onto the woman who delivered the exceptional chain of events that led to my familiarity with her son.

“That boldness of character materialized in a sense of certainty when Lucien asked me if I would move into his shabby apartment of his, and at that point I was still drugged up on the impulsivity that emanated from this charming metaphysicist, so I agreed and packed up my things. Living with a philosopher is quite the ordeal, but we made it work, because we truly believed in one another, and though it was a messy old flat with no redeeming qualities, it was all we had, and we couldn’t have asked for more.”

Edie’s face, upon hearing that comment, is syncopated to the pitter patter of a sad smile, recalling just how messy our apartment is and how she tried to discreetly clean it up when she visited for snacks before she knew Lucien besides that audacious exchange over the telephone when she was distressed from my whereabouts, how, now that her mind has been enlightened by the filter of death, she appreciates the meagerness of our apartment, appreciates that we made something out of nothing without a doubt, appreciates that we cooperated so well together that our apartment was the least of our worries as long as we could function in it, and she registers exactly how much of a shame it is that the bond between Lucien and me was broken by a man who did not fit in the connection but pushed his way in regardless.

“I may not have known Lucien for as long as the rest of you” — I gesture to the scanty audience of only a few — “but I felt that I could understand him in ways that others couldn’t, and I felt that whatever drove us together was something of perfection in the universe’s alignment of events.” I arrange my hands in the air to calm the crowd before my next comment, somewhat of a hammer to a little girl’s princess dreams. “Now, I’m not one to believe in love in first sight, because that suggests that someone was made for you, when in reality it’s that you were made for yourself and just happen to interact so vividly with another human if you can find them, and what I do believe is that this happened with Lucien and me. Most of the time, I thought of myself as his protege, but as I reflect on it, that was not the case. We were equals, benefiting each other and gliding together like gears boosting ourselves up and then helping the alternate companion in their endeavors. It was a machine, yet it was as fluid as wherever we wanted to go, and this just worked.”

Yes, we fell out at times, perhaps more than we should’ve, but it was in our patience with each other that we could carry on through the battle raging around our heads and devise plans to dodge the soaring arrows, the poisoned tips, the sharp feathers, and that’s more than I can say for other couples, especially couples our age, anchored to youth as volatile as the weather that could bring on a storm anytime it pleases. We were doing well until Lucien wasn’t, until one of us fell apart and the other came crashing down with him, until this funeral demanded to be held, until we could postpone it no longer.

“Occasionally I would teach Lucien what I already knew, but he taught me so much more, sneaking his philosophical discoveries into everyday conversation, and though I always pestered him about being so pretentious in his habit of doing that, I cannot explain how much I was enriched by this. I have no dubiety in saying that I learned more from Lucien in a month or so than I did in my entire career at school, all thirteen years of it, plus four more at Columbia. Those years were wasted on routine, but Lucien brought spontaneity to the table, and I definitely wouldn’t have traded that for seventeen more years of quantum physics and the Civil War, nor for anything else.”

My blog, _the Metaphysicist_ (which, now that I’m contemplating the life of Lucien, is a title that fits him very well), is for intellectuals, however framed that intellect is, but it cannot compare to what Lucien has drilled into my heart, his philosophical spiels, his explanation of everything that normal people wouldn’t need an explanation for, his fervor towards living a life well explored, and I’m sorry to say it, but the people who read my blog will probably never experience this true kind of intellect, although they still consider my blog to be the main source of it, when my blog is only conducted by research and witty responses to that research, not the fundamental principles of life that are only unveiled to those aware of their presence.

It’s disheartening to recognize that, if I had not met Lucien, I would be destined to die with the misconception that I learned all that there is to learn, that I was the official gatekeeper of knowledge, that I understood how the world functions both in science and in philosophy, but in truth I would’ve only scraped the bare minimum. With Lucien, however, he stood behind me and repositioned my tools so that I could dig farther into what this all means, into why we’re here at all, into everything that I would’ve never considered without him, and I am inexpressibly thankful for that.

“Every moment I spent with Lucien Carr was heaven on earth, was like believing in something after being such a strong proponent of atheism for my entire life, was like truly living by tasting every possibility of life exposed to me, and if something was not exposed to me, I was taught by Lucien to go and catch it for a sample.” I scratch the polished wood of the podium, formulating my next words so that they are perfect, while the audience thinks I’m composing myself from the melancholy of discharging his eulogy from my mouth and my metaphysical mind, but I am not wearied by this, as Lucien would’ve told me not to be, and this day is all about him. “He preached about broadening your life, about disregarding your comfort zone completely and living on the edge instead, and I idolized him for doing just that.

“Lucien Carr was everything to me, and I suppose he still is, so to see him struggling all of the sudden was like hell for me. I have witnessed many kinds of underworlds, but those were all things that only I was tasked with overcoming, just keeping to myself to make time to solve them, but as I said, Lucien was loud and proud, and soon enough his trials boasted in somatic dishes spoiled by years in a plastic container until the stench slipped out and warned me against what was transpiring in what I thought was a levelheaded man whose intellect blocked all of his prior struggles that crafted his writer identity. He was falling so quickly, and I couldn’t catch him, couldn’t even cradle him one last time before he was swept under the rug when I thought he would never surrender, but this is what he wanted, right?” My eyes crumble into slitted tunnels only allowing the light from Lucien’s remembrance to pass through, along with the tears I tried for so long to fend off. “This is what he wanted.”

I can’t be sobbing on the stage of a funeral for my best friend. I can’t copy the actions of the audience, because Lucien instructed me to always stand out and to never conform, to be a diamond in a world of squares, so with a determination I have never before observed in my anxious mess of a self, I slash the tears away from my skin and redirect my eulogy to something inspiring, to a happiness that Lucien could not see before he died.

“And though he is not here, I know he also would’ve wanted us to continue forwards, to never forget him but to move on from grief as well, because those are undeniably two separate but essential things. He would’ve wanted us to broaden our lives until we’ve tasted it all, until we can die at an old age having witnessed all of the years and all of the adventures available to us. He would’ve wanted us to find an infinity in the mundane, to always search for new opportunities, no matter how impossible they seem to reach. He would’ve wanted us to endure the hardships of the world as he could not forever. He would’ve wanted us to _live_.”

And that’s that.

The audience is silent, suspended in both shock and the occupation that their tears provide them with, unable to comprehend how I could’ve written this, especially on the spot. Even I am astonished that I could pump words out so fervidly without preparation beforehand, when my anxiety usually prohibits me from speaking clearly even when I have a script right in front of me, so this is a win both for my mental state and for my remembrance of the person who taught me the most about this writing career of mine and why it is so imperative that I never abandon it unless I have nothing more to say. I feel that I have done him justice, and that’s all I need when he could never avenge himself before.

I jump from the stage and take a moment by Lucien’s casket, a structure I had never looked at before, because I was fucking scared of how disheveled I would become at the sight of it, and that threat is still imminent, perhaps more so than before, because now that I see him, I cannot forget him, the way his boyishly messy hair has now been combed neatly, the way his suit is far from the prison of wrinkles when Lucien would’ve preferred it to fold the way nature would like it to fold, the way his ocean blue eyes are hooded by his eyelids so that their intensity will never face the world again, the way that he has been preserved in a falsehood that I can’t even touch without being banned from funerals permanently, which wouldn’t be argued by me, but I certainly wouldn’t like a grease spot on my criminal record over my inability to control my passion for Lucien Carr, so I back away before I vomit or cause trouble with the manufacturers of his coffin, and stalk back to my seat in the front row, plopping down to proceed with the session.

The funeral carries on with a few words from Edie and the brief verbal intermissions from Jack, and then there’s the lowering of Lucien’s coffin into the ground, a tearful experience for us all, because I know that I will never see my best friend physically again, and I detect that by the end people have collected themselves more adeptly than they attempted to at the beginning of the ceremony, which is helpful, I suppose, but a funeral is still futile, in my jaded opinion. Edie is doing better, too, I notice when she picks me up from my chair to exit the funeral, a pleasant fact, as I hate seeing this lovely woman at her lowest point.

Being too shaken up herself, she employs Jack to guide us both towards the car to be like the average human who forgets their lost friend instead of honoring them jovially until the end of their own life, and I pick up on the fact that our gaits are slower than usual, burdened by remorse and wading through the tar we stirred ourselves.

And we are in this tar until I spot, leaning on one of the gravestones like the disrespectful ingrate that he is, the someone who started this all, the someone who deposited black and blue onto my best friend’s back, the someone who prompted Lucien towards suicide and, in a way, scheduled this glum funeral, and I cannot deal with his presence here, so, dropping all of my anxious symptoms, I choose to accost him.

“What the fuck are you doing here, David?” I shout, extracting a flinch from Edie, a woman opposed to cursing, even in times like these when it signifies just how much I hate this abusive son of a bitch.

David turns from the gravestone to behold us, inappropriately surprised that I caught him in the act of spying on our funeral to which he wasn’t invited and would never be invited after fucking causing it, but he does not reflect the same umbrage that orchestrates my motion right now, does not advance towards me to defend himself with those pointless excuses.

I start to swagger towards David, but Jack attempts to hold me back, which he could do successfully if he didn’t secretly want me to show this traitor how much he tortured my friend and my friend’s friends, and it comes to the point where Jack eventually releases me so that I can fight the man.

“Get the hell away from here!”

David is taken aback, though it’s a fabricated emotion sharpened by years of abusing people who only sought love from him, and he places a hand on his chest as he claims, “Why, I was just admiring the setting and paying homage to all of the lost souls.”

“Bullshit,” I contradict, punctuating my one worded response by almost spitting in David’s face and nevertheless getting up in that face. “You can’t pay homage to all of the lost souls when you planted one of them in here.”

“That’s very presumptuous of you, considering I don’t even know your name,” David replies in a condescending manner typical of adults.

“And it’ll stay that way. In the meantime, just fucking go somewhere else, somewhere where you can’t destroy anything else, ‘cause you already destroyed my best friend.” Wanting no more of this, I clasp Jack and Edie’s hands and march away from the scene of a killer, not once glancing behind me, because I’m being the bigger person now that Lucien is not here to accommodate for my vertical challenges, and I would say that it’s going well. If only he knew that.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: THIS IS THE LONGEST CHAPTER I'VE WRITTEN IN THE METAPHYSICIST OMG IT'S LIKE 5.2K WORDS WHAT THE FUCK AND IT'S SO SAD TOO OHHHHMYYYYGOOOOODODDODDD
> 
> being a cruel writer, I kept telling people I was writing a eulogy so I could trick them into thinking someone died but you know it was only lucien and my hopes and dreams :') it's just f i c t i o n
> 
> psychological egoism: humans are always motivated by self-interest
> 
> ~Dicknoodle


	46. o shit farewell

“So, Allen, how have you been holding up?” Edie inquires, her well groomed finger tapping on her teacup to provide the room with its only rhythm when life has been dulled since Lucien’s passing, when I have been alone in the apartment.

It’s been a month since Lucien willingly stepped in front of an automobile and was thus killed by it, and my grief of earlier times, where I scorned the universe and for David Kammerer in both of their actions that led to this, has now lapsed into a different sort of grief that perhaps wouldn’t be considered grief any longer, where I remember Lucien as a pleasant figure in my life, which he was until the hazy lense of mourning was slid overtop of him for as long as it took for me to move on, and all that remains now is appreciation for a watershed idol in my life.

But no matter how forcefully I try to convince myself that I have preserved Lucien the way he would’ve wanted to be preserved in the minds of his friends, there are still drabbles of melancholy that originate from the fact that he has not been here for over four weeks and will never be back to see me die with him, and I might as well be alone forever, because although so many people will tell you that there is always someone else, no one on this entire planet can compare to the extraordinary Lucien Carr, and even if someone _could_ compare, I would reject them still, because to accept someone more beautiful than Lucien (which may or may not be impossible, depending on if I find this person) would be to deface his spot of prominence and all of its intensity to favor someone who simply does not offer the same things as Lucien when you consider how intricate each and every human being is. Many people will also tell me that Lucien would’ve wanted me to move on and find happiness in a life that should not be left remote and unexplored, and that may be true, but the answer lies in whether or not I can dig myself out of his indelible legacy to make room for another person, and I’m just not sure I’m prepared for that.

So I’ll wash my face in stale water and still feel the sensation of his fingers upon my cheeks, and it’s not like I really desire to let go of it anyway, because it reminds me that he is ever present, even in death, that he is the fondling of the curtains against the window as I pound at the keys of my computer to produce something not nearly as beautiful as him in a world where he does not exist anyway, at least not now that he tripped accidentally and was met with the misfortune of his landing spot being a black hole in which he was spaghettified and mutilated yet held hostage forever, and because he’s in this black hole, he isn’t here with me, even if I expect him to be right around the corner choking on nicotine and thinking it’s the most hilarious thing in the world, but he’s not, and he won’t be ever again, because I saw his casket lowered into the dirt, and I saw his cold dead hands, and I saw everything that I shouldn’t have seen but needed to have seen in order to carry on with my life and explore it like Lucien would’ve ordered me to.

Nevertheless, I can’t carry on with my life, because I’m still in this godforsaken apartment that’s smelling less and less like the citrus aroma of Lucien Carr and more and more like the sweat and ramen noodle concoction of Allen Ginsberg, and I have no intentions of leaving. Edie would have to fucking drag me out of this place for me to exit permanently anytime soon, because there’s something comforting about this place. To leave it (or worse, to see it sold) would be torture, as there would be new owners who know nothing about what transpired here, the late night philosophy, the incessant clicking of Lucien’s typewriter that I’ve preserved right where he deserted it by the window in the living room, the solace we found solely in each other that I refuse to let be broken, especially not by intruders, but Edie is persistent about getting me out of here.

“You could move back in with Jack and me, you know,” Edie offers, but I stop her before I get caught up in the same impulsivity of change that occurred when I first met Lucien, a man who was struck down by that impulsivity and serves as a reminder that I should be careful first and foremost.

“I’m not going anywhere, but thanks for the proposal.”

One side of Edie’s crimson lacquered mouth droops, disappointed with my decision in the most motherly of ways. “Allen, it isn’t healthy to dwell in things that will never appear again.”

Stirred up enough by the fragments of grief that remain to sit in my soul and now stirred up even further by Edie’s intervention into my personal business, I snap, “It isn’t healthy to question a volatile mess either, but you’re doing it anyway.”

My comment was far too harsh to be directed at a woman who has done nothing but figure out ways to improve my quality of living, and I debate apologizing to her before the cruelty drills too far into her heart, but she fires back before I can do so, though she was nevertheless damaged by my callous words. “You’re going to end up like Lucien if you continue to act like this.”

That comment was even harsher than my own, driving a battering ram into my stomach to expel every trace of oxygen from the past and the present and the future, stealing away everything I need to sustain myself. Edie wasn’t referring to how beautiful Lucien was, how that beauty emanated from him more than anything emanated from anybody, which I wouldn’t mind being paired to. Rather, she was referring to how Lucien couldn’t fucking stay alive when it wasn’t even his fault, both in David Kammerer’s return and in the mental state that ensued. If a human could choose the extent of their health, mental illnesses would not exist because no one would opt for them, and Lucien wouldn’t have been thrown into a pit as deep as the one he was actually thrown into.

Lucien was aware that he held the power to change the world, and he planned on utilizing it to do just that, except his life was snipped short by forces he could not control, and that was the end of him. These iniquities taped a gag to his mouth to burn his protests away, to silence all that he could enact in a world where his enactments are imperatively needed, to make sure that Lucien Carr was nothing more than a victim among thousands, a nameless statistic. This was involuntary in its fullest sense. Lucien would never willingly choose this route, and that’s why Edie’s derogatory remark is something I cannot tolerate, especially not from a woman whose demeanor would usually prohibit this kind of slandering, and I cannot allow her to get away without realizing that this is unacceptable.

I slant my body towards her as my teacup shifts unwittingly to accommodate it so as to pack more spite into only a few words, because spite is what I need to remind this woman that Lucien was so much more than actions he could not influence. “You don’t know _shit_ about Lucien.”

Edie clatters her teacup in her saucer to signify that she has finished her drink, and with these closing affairs she finds it best to agree. “Well I suppose that’s true.” With one last despondent glance at me, as if she pities me for being this level of a mess, a level that I wouldn’t have contemplated until she shoved her disapproval straight into my face, and brashly so, Edie rises from her chair, disregards the action of draining her teacup of every drop like I do, and departs from the apartment, rendering me once again alone.

I decide, now that I’m broaching topics previously uncharted while I was in a state of such fragility but have been cracked by my outburst with Edie, that I should finally read some of the comments that were left on _the Metaphysicist_ , a blog that I have abandoned in my haste to map the complexities of life with a man that is currently dead, so it seems like a fitting time to return to it, but I’m not yet certain whether or not I’ll carry on with my article writing, as I have been too enlightened by a brief period of metaphysics to ever resign myself to something as mundane as journalism.

Most of the comments are people politely (and sometimes not so politely) requesting that I update my blog, or asking where the hell I’ve gone while they’ve been checking my blog every day for new content like the knowledge hungry frauds that they are, but there’s one that differs from the rest, one with which I will conclude my article writing business if I elect to do so. “Which writer has most shaped who _you_ are as a writer?”

Learning from other writers remains to be a controversial topic to me, because writing is all about the outward expression of the soul, not the outward expression of the soul warped by someone else’s outward expression of the soul, but there’s no denying that I’ve learned a lot from Lucien Carr, and I would not trade that for anything, not my ego, not my literary virginity undisturbed by other writers, not my success, not any of it.

So I rush to my computer, a passion igniting itself from its previous heap upon the ground where the rest of the shards lie, and I begin to write the purest answer I can form, no restrictions, no thoughts, just the essence of what Lucien has taught me to do.

_Imagine a writer, not so different from yourself, living eternally in the basement of their best friend’s house. Yes, this may seem like a tale of pity and a lack of success, because that writer is twenty-three years old and doesn’t have a job besides gathering the various papers strewn about the driveway and occasionally on the front stoop, but there’s something beautiful in that writer’s head that should be kept in the basement of a married couple’s home, and that writer is hoping to explore it._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I can't believe the title was a dat boi joke omg I can't stand dat boi
> 
> so anyway this is the end lmao have fun suffering
> 
> I noticed that the first and last words of the book create "Imagine it" and I think Lucien would like that bc I love Lucien so much he just deserves so much happiness but he got this shit and I'm sorry
> 
> leave a review if you want idk I just really like comments please gratify me
> 
> this was my fave thing to write so I hope you enjoyed it even if I caused you significant emotional pain but you know that's metaphysics for you
> 
> reconstructivism: all societies should continually reform to create a better government
> 
> ~Dakota (I actually spelled my name correctly lmao)


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